The book s purpose is to help community-based primary care physicians and nurses, and laboratory-based microbiologists, better understand each other s requirements in collecting and interpreting specimens, and thus to improve the quality of patient care, while saving resources and reducing unnecessary antibiotic prescription.
The book s structure focuses on three basic principles: deciding whether a specimen is clinically necessary; how to collect the specimen effectively, and how to interpret the laboratory report.
Individual chapters cover all the main specimen types sent to the...