Clinical Microbiology Assignment:

Hospital-acquired infection and outbreaks:

Hospital-acquired infection or nosocomial infection is not a new concept. Historically, hospitals were notorious for septic infections, puerperal sepsis, gangrene and death. Times have moved on since the work of Lister, but hospitals often hit the news headlines with scare stories of infection acquired whilst being in hospital. 

Outbreaks can be defined as sporadic, household, general, epidemic or pandemic. Outbreaks with potential for causing epidemics or pandemics often make the news and in recent years there have been several highly documents outbreaks of human pathogens, including SARS, cholera, bird flu and swine flu.

Your microbiology assignment will take you through the identification and consideration of a pathogenic micro-organism associated with either a nosocomial infection or a disease outbreak that could be seen in the UK today. NOTE that we will be using “safer” strains than the major pathogens seen in hospitals today, but all the bacteria you will investigate are potentially pathogenic if handled carelessly.  High standards of aseptic technique and good laboratory practice are to be used at all times.
 
Case Study: A female patient in ER with suspected toxic shock syndrome (TSS).

Overview:

You will be given an unidentified micro-organism (patient case), isolated from a patient sample. Your task is to identify the organism and then undertake research to investigate thoroughly the current knowledge about this clinical pathogen. The laboratory sessions allow you to select practice of a range of simple but fundamental microbiological tests that are routinely performed in hospital Microbiology laboratories to analyse clinical samples and make a diagnostic identification of the organism present. Your literature research, following the identification of the pathogenic organism, should include a range of high-quality (primary) publications and should consider the biological features of the bacterium that contribute to pathology, including the molecular basis of the disease caused in patients and of virulence of the particular species. You should also review the structures or functions that form the focus of drug susceptibility and/or resistance and you should also be able to comment on the epidemiology, the latest laboratory, treatments, etc. Your report should, of course, contain correctly formatted citations and a reference list to indicate your research scope.

At the end of practical, it is discovered that it is Staphylococcus Aureus from gram positive cause the disease. The lengths of word between 1500-2000 words excluding reference (Harvard Reference).