Clinical Microbiology*

ELEC425 / PMDN 661

Department
Internal Medicine

Clinical or Non-Clinical Course
Non-Clinical

Physician Assessed Patient Facing
No

Prerequisites
Pre-Approval from Course Director

Other
Passing score on USMLE Step 1 exam

Goal
n/a

Objectives
At the end of this course, the student will be able to:

  1. Describe the basic concepts of medical microbiology, e.g. taxonomy of human pathogens, modes of transmission, growth requirements, appearance on Gram stain, and important benchtop biochemical reactions, and learn clinical implications of clinical laboratory results.
  2. Choose appropriate laboratory techniques to aid in the identification of a suspected pathogen.
  3. Assist with processing of patient specimens.
  4. Evaluate antibiotic resistance in microbial isolates by both phenotypic methods (e.g., modified carbapenem inhibition assay) and molecular methods (e.g., CARBA-R real time PCR).
  5. Assign species identity to isolate based on 16S sequencing results.
  6. Develop a whole genome sequence for a novel clinical isolate and upload the genome to the NIH NCBI database.

Method of Assessment
Standard Non-clinical Evaluation - Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

Course Director
John Farrell, MD

Course Coordinator
Ashley Finney
afinney@uic.edu
309-840-7268

Location
OSF System Lab

Setting
Inpatient

Night Call
No

Laboratory
Yes

Weekends
Yes

Please Specify
Optional

House Staff
Yes

Number of Learners per Block
2

Duration
4 weeks

Who is this elective available to
M4s (in Phase 3)

Blocks Available
All except fall and winter break.