Reading Culture Plates: A Professional Bench Guide in Clinical Bacteriology

Introduction Part I: Foundation in Reading Plates Chapter One: The Basic Media Chapter Two: Gram Stain Chapter Three: Understanding Normal Flora vs. Opportunistic/ Strict Organisms Chapter Four: Classification, Cultivation, and General Characteristics Part II: Reading Cultures Case Studies Epilogue/Conclusion Bibliography

The bacteriology student spends lots of time learning the many types of families, species, niches, diseases, virulence factors, normal flora, opportunistic versus strict pathogens, general and phenotypic characteristics of bacteria. In the laboratory, they are presented with dozens of bacteria growing on different media with the expectation to try to remember them all. While flow charts are designed to help remember all the different tests needed for the identifications, it is hard to put it all together at the bench. Many clinical internships are brief. They do not have the time to teach it. It becomes a very daunting task to overcome and put it all together. This book is a quick and thorough guide that will provide the first practical training needed at the bench to learn to “read” clinical bacterial cultures. It is illustrated with over 150 plates from real patient cultures. It presents a practical method of how to utilize all the information already learned. It begins with reviewing and organizing the foundation material and then presents 30 case studies to bring it all together. Utilizing this book would not only making it easier and faster to learn the practical concepts of reading plates in a clinical microbiology laboratory, it will also make the learning less stressful much faster and complete.