Cases in Clinical Infectious Disease Practice

Book excerpt: In the era of cost cutting and lack of adequate health insurance for many patients, clinical skills and time spent with patients are not adequately compensated. Yet, these dwindling and underpaid skills – good history taking, observation of and listening to patients, and physical examination of patients – remain very essential to making and reaching a complete and accurate diagnosis. Expensive laboratory and imaging diagnostics while very relevant, should not replace these age-old skills that have served to enhance and maintain the doctor-patient relationship and human connection, a connection that is often necessary for healing. Cases in Clinical Infectious Disease Practice uses case studies to illustrate how the infectious disease clinician processes and integrates data to arrive at a diagnosis. This type of hands-on approach, invaluable in training programs, is utilized to take the reader through initial patient encounter, through the history and physical examination, to simple laboratory findings and stains, to a final diagnosis, in a way that is easily accessible to clinicians, students, and laboratory personnel working with clinical specimens. Appeals to practitioners of all levels, with focus on patients with common problems or complications of common infections without heavy technical language Emphasizes basic clinical skills including history taking, observation, epidemiology, and physical exam, as well as simple laboratory tests, explaining how they lead to a reasonable diagnosis Presents cases seen first-hand within the community setting, reflective of cases or situations a resident or student is likely to encounter in the real world after training Cases in Clinical Infectious Disease Practice is an essential resource for clinicians, graduate and medical school students, and others conducting medical and clinical microbiology or infectious disease research on real patients.