Carey: Medical Microbiology for the New Curriculum: A Case-Based Approach

At many schools, there has been a shift from department-based courses to an approach based on individual organ systems. In an organ systems approach, when the heart and cardiovascular system are taught, all of the basic sciences involving the heart are taught at the same time. Such an approach requires the students to integrate the information in a very different way and avoids the redundancy that previously resulted from teaching each discipline as a separate course.

In summary, the new curricula have changed from being content oriented to small group, case-based, interactive teaching. At the time this book was conceived, the authors were microbiology (RC, KLM) and infectious disease (MS) faculty participating in new curricula at their respective medical schools (University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Loyola University School of Medicine).
The goal was to create a case based text that could be used by an integrated team teaching microbiology and/or infectious diseases.

The objective was not to attempt to cover every infectious disease or microorganism, but rather to use examples that would stress the key principles of microorganism pathogenesis, proper use of a clinical microbiology laboratory, and appropriate selection and use of antimicrobial agents.

The cases are grouped by disease presentation from the simpler cases to the more complex. Each case can stand on its own since technical terms, images, and concepts are embedded into the individual case, thus allowing each course director the ability to pick and choose when a case is to be presented to the students. This book is not meant to be a comprehensive microbiology text. It is designed to fill a unique niche created by the new curriculum. Because, sadly, many of the new curricula no longer include a laboratory component when teaching microbiology.
A faculty team including clinicians and basic scientists as well as students, residents, and fellows will be using this text and have tried to include case aspects such that every member of the team can participate. Each case has a patient history, differential diagnosis, clinical clues, laboratory data, pathogenesis, treatment and prevention, additional points, and references. The cases are presented as unknowns so that students will be challenged to create a differential diagnosis as they will in real life, making sure to include noninfectious causes that would present with similar clinical findings. Appropriate choice of lab tests needed to work through the differential diagnosis as well as instruction on specimen collection is included because these are areas that are rarely covered during core clinical rotations but that we believe to be incredibly important.
This book will be a skeleton for interactive learning and that clinical faculty will supplement the cases with their own clinical experience and the basic science faculty may enrich the cases with their expert knowledge of the pathogen’s structure and virulence factors. It is a dynamic text that will require updates for treatment and prevention as these evolve. Each chapter had been updated  as new information became available and to censor ourselves by restricting the contents to those essential for medical students who are overwhelmed by the amount of material they must assimilate.

Contents

1. Case One: Boy with Acute Pharyngitis 
2. Case Two: Student with Dysuria
3. Case Three: Boy with Vomiting and Diarrhea after a School Picnic
4. Case Four: Chronic Diarrhea in a Traveler
5. Case Five: Boy with Skin Lesions
6. Case Six: Student with a Skin Lesion Following a Trip to India
7. Case Seven: Man with a Surgical Wound after a Prosthetic Hip Placement
8. Case Eight: Boy with Fever and Right Leg Pain Following a Canoe Accident
9. Case Nine: Woman with Acute Abdominal Pain and Cervical Discharge
10. Case Ten: Woman with Acute Fever and Productive Cough
11. Case Eleven: Nursing Home Resident with Fever, Cough, and Myalgias
12. Case Twelve: Baby with Fever, Rhinitis and Bronchiolitis
13. Case Thirteen: Woman with Fever, Cough, and Weight Loss
14. Case Fourteen: Student with Chronic Fever, Dry Cough and Pneumonia
15. Case Fifteen: Bone Marrow Transplant Recipient with Nodular Pneumonia
16. Case Sixteen: Boy with Acute Fever, Headache, and Confusion
17. Case Seventeen: Woman with Lymphocytic Meningitis
18. Case Eighteen: Neonate with Fever and Vesicular Rash
19. Case Nineteen: Renal Transplant Recipient with Chronic Meningitis
20. Case Twenty: Man with Acute Fever and Periumbilical Pain
21. Case Twenty One: Man with Two Weeks of Fever and a Systolic Murmur
22. Case Twenty Two: Young Man with Fatigue and an Abnormal Liver Test
23. Case Twenty Three: Fever of Unknown Origin in a Traveler
24. Case Twenty Four: Student with Fever, Lymphadenopathy and Hepatosplenomegaly
25. Index

Book Details

• Paperback: 289 pages
• Publisher: Wiley-Liss; 1 edition (December 17, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471479330
• ISBN-13: 978-0471479338
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7 x 0.6 inches

List Price: $89.95