Chapter 15 : Maturing into a Diagnostic Microbiologist for Today

Abstract:

Within microbiology, Ellen Jo Baron discovered the visual aesthetics of microscopy and the ability to describe and identify bacteria. A diagnostic microbiology laboratory at a county public health department had an opening for a person with a B.S. in microbiology. Ellen Jo Baron smelled the autoclave and the unique odors of a busy microbiology laboratory. She rotated through many areas of the laboratory, learning the basics from the ground up-Mycobacterium tuberculosis laboratory, urines, susceptibilities, wounds, genital cultures, and others. The author talks about the time when she found herself at the bottom rung of the clinical profession. An incident involving an anesthesiologist led her to seek a higher academic degree. This anesthesiologist controlled the postappendectomy care for a young patient and demanded antibiotic susceptibility tests on all organisms recovered from the patient's respiratory secretion. Ellen Jo Baron knew that the organisms recovered were simply the patient's normal mucosal and saliva flora and that antibiotic therapy to try to remove them was inappropriate. Nevertheless, the anesthesiologist would not listen to a lowly laboratory technologist, and the pathologists did not have the microbiological background to refuse the doctor's requests. Multiple successive antibiotics were prescribed to treat that patient's "pathogens," and as a result the patient developed pneumonia with a panresistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa and died. At this point the author thought that if she had a master of science degree she could gain credibility and respect from clinicians. This incident urged the author to enter a master's program in medical microbiology.