Micro Lab II

The other cool thing we do in lab is identification of unknowns. We are given a clinical case and asked to generate a microbiological differential. Then we are given some sort of sample - a throat swab, a blood culture - to run our experiments and identify the microbe. Some of the time it feels artificial because it's obvious from the clinical case or the sample we get what we're supposed to learn. But at the end of this block, we'll get to plan out a wet case in which we design and execute everything. We get an unknown case, decide what kind of culture we'd like (blood, urine, throat, stool, CSF, cervix, sputum, other) and what kind of laboratory tests we want to run (CBC, clotting times, chem panel, U/A, etc.). They give us information on how much everything costs too. We then have to work up the patient and conduct all the tests to secure a diagnosis. I think that's really cool.