MICROBIOLOGY MATTERS !
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This is a website which is designed to be a resource site for people interested in microbiology, and in particular those who have or are pursuing a career in any aspect of microbiology, including bacteriology, mycology, virology and molecular biology. Authored by Michael Addidle.
MICROBIOLOGY MATTERS !
2M ago
You are probably familiar with the scenario… A blood culture takes a couple of days to become positive. A Gram stain shows Gram negative rods. The plates are subbed but after another couple of days there is still no growth on the plates. The clinicians are getting impatient and are phoning the lab looking for ..read more
MICROBIOLOGY MATTERS !
3M ago
This quote attributed to Voltaire (“Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien”), rings true to me. I have never been a perfectionist, and the idealistic pursuit of perfectionism can hinder real-life achievement and progress. The quote came back into my conciousness during the early days of the COVID pandemic when I listened to a great speech ..read more
MICROBIOLOGY MATTERS !
3M ago
A good proportion of my job as a clinical microbiologist is being an antimicrobial steward. i.e. giving antibiotic advice based on microbiology results. And a good chunk of this advice is “unsolicited”, in that nobody has specifically asked for it. One could argue that the advice is “semi-solicited” in that it is given under the ..read more
MICROBIOLOGY MATTERS !
4M ago
After a prolonged COVID-induced hibernation, Mycoplasma pneumoniae is back in NZ. Over the past couple of months there have been a sprinkling of cases throughout NZ picked up on respiratory panel testing by PCR in diagnostic laboratories, including my own. I can hardly remember the last time I saw a Mycoplasma pneumoniae infection. It was ..read more
MICROBIOLOGY MATTERS !
5M ago
I have recently returned from back-to-back overseas conferences in Scotland and Ireland, along with the more important business of visiting family in between. Here are a few of my thoughts and observations from attending (microbiology) conferences: I am immensely privileged. To be able to travel overseas and attend educational conferences is a real privilege. It ..read more
MICROBIOLOGY MATTERS !
5M ago
I spent a lot of my medical student days working part-time in the bookmakers, where managing odds and probability underpin the industry. Mathematics was my favourite subject at school, and within that field, probability was my favourite sub-topic. Now that I am a clinical microbiologist, I can see the similarities. Clinical microbiologists get involved in ..read more
MICROBIOLOGY MATTERS !
6M ago
I am the master of false assumptions… When a hospital close by was affected by a VanB VRE outbreak, I suspected that my local hospital would be relatively immune, due to its smaller size, different patient cohort and relatively strict antimicrobial stewardship policies. Of course, my assumptions were wrong! It didn’t take long for the ..read more
MICROBIOLOGY MATTERS !
6M ago
I am 50 now, so I only have another 25-30 years of my working career left. So much to do in so little time! I often wonder what the microbiology lab will look like on my last day at work. (I have posted on this before). Possibly a more interesting question is how I will ..read more
MICROBIOLOGY MATTERS !
7M ago
I had the opportunity to visit a food microbiology laboratory a few weeks ago. It was clearly a good laboratory with excellent quality assurance measures, but it was interesting to visit a microbiology lab that did not have a MALDI-TOF platform in place. The lab still relied very much on traditional identification techniques for ..read more
MICROBIOLOGY MATTERS !
1y ago
We have a “no clinical details-no test” policy at my lab, so in general, we get accompanying clinical details with the vast majority of samples received for microbiology testing. After all, at the end of the day, clinicians just want their requests processed… This is great, but it always irritates me slightly when we get ..read more