In critically ill patients MRSA bacteraemia was found to have a higher attributable mortality in comparison to MSSA bacteremia. The optimal phenotypic method for detecting methicillin resistance in S. aureus remains controversial. This work aimed at evaluating the utility of chromagar directly from positive blood culture bottles for rapid diagnosis of MRSA, and comparing it with MRSA latex test, and disc diffusion method.All positive blood culture samples showing Gram positive cocci in clusters, were included in the study (n=84) and examined further for Staphylococcus aureus content by Slidex, Slide coagulase, Mannitol Salt and DNAse, adopting Slidex test as a gold standard, and for MRSA by Cefoxitin Disc diffusion susceptibility testing, MRSA latex test and MRSA chromagar, with Disc diffusion adopted as the reference method. Concerning S.aureus identification, Coagulase test was the most sensitive (100%), specific (97.4) and accurate (98.8), followed by Mannitol salt test (100%, 94.9%, and 97.6% respectively) then DNAse test (97.7%, 82.1% and 80.4% respectively). As regards MRSA detection, MRSA latex was the most sensitive, specific and accurate relative to our gold standard. MRSA chromagar provided most rapid result delivery time and was the least labour intensive at reasonable cost, despite the slight difference from the gold standard, where it demonstrated 98.1% specificity, 98.8% accuracy. MRSA CHROMagar appears to be dependable for detection of MRSA directly from blood culture bottles, while still being speedy and cost effective. As regards identification of staphylococcus aureus, Slidex remains the gold standard in this domain.