Honestly that sounds to me less like a lack of common sense and more like a lack of knowledge basic to her field. Geez.
But then I spend my days explaining to practitioners that no, I didn't perform an antibiotic susceptibility test on the specimen they sent me because it grew ZERO PATHOGENS, so please to not be treating the nonexistent bacteria with antibiotics, kthanxbai.
Or, yes Virginia Ms. Perky 20-year-old RN, it DOES in fact make sense that your patient has one blood culture out of a set of two that is positive while the others are negative. Blood is innately a very hostile environment to bacteria and often there are only small numbers of organisms present, and THAT is why we routinely perform them IN SETS OF TWO.(Although that one did very graciously thank me for explaining it to her.)
So maybe you're right and it is a lack of common sense, because I feel like this stuff is probably taught in...oh, I don't know...college?
I thought it was something you'd learn in basic biochemistry or chemistry class. But this is the same person who, when setting up her lab bench, attached tubing directly to the vacuum port instead of setting up a waste side-arm flask. No trap, no filter, nothing. And couldn't figure out why I wigged out (and the entire system clogged when she sucked DMEM/high glucose that had cells growing in it into the plumbing).
...wow, and people wonder why there are so many antibiotic-resistant bacteria nowadays?
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But then I spend my days explaining to practitioners that no, I didn't perform an antibiotic susceptibility test on the specimen they sent me because it grew ZERO PATHOGENS, so please to not be treating the nonexistent bacteria with antibiotics, kthanxbai.
Or, yes Virginia Ms. Perky 20-year-old RN, it DOES in fact make sense that your patient has one blood culture out of a set of two that is positive while the others are negative. Blood is innately a very hostile environment to bacteria and often there are only small numbers of organisms present, and THAT is why we routinely perform them IN SETS OF TWO.(Although that one did very graciously thank me for explaining it to her.)
So maybe you're right and it is a lack of common sense, because I feel like this stuff is probably taught in...oh, I don't know...college?
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...wow, and people wonder why there are so many antibiotic-resistant bacteria nowadays?
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okay, when an undergrad compsci student is sitting here going "jesus, lady", you have a problem.
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