To complete this assignment, you will receive a clinical specimen. Your clinical specimen might be from a patient wound, stool, throat, vagina, urinary tract, cerebral spinal fluid, or sputum from the lower respiratory tract. Your clinical specimen will have two unknown bacterial species. One of the species will be a Gram positive coccus and the other will be a Gram negative bacillus. I will send you the results of the tests for your clinical specimen, and you will use the flow charts to determine the identity of each species. Next, you will write up two reports; one for the Gram positive cocci and one for the Gram negative bacillus.
How To Determine Your Unknown Using a Flow Chart
Using the Results Sheet I send you, you are to follow the flow charts to come up with the correct identifications.
For example, suppose your Results Sheet says that one of the Unknowns is a Gram positive coccus. That means you use the Gram positive cocci flow chart. For that Gram positive unknown, suppose it tells you that the catalase test was negative. That means you follow the flow chart on the catalase negative branch. The next test is then cefoxitin. If it says in the Result Sheet that it grew up to the disk, that means it is resistant to cefoxitin. So you follow that branch and it ends with the name of the species, GpA.
For each report, you are asked to put in an abbreviated flow chart based on the tests that you would have run. For example, for the unknown Gram positive cocci shown above, you would draw in just the branches where you see the red arrows:
You take the same approach with your Gram Negative Bacillus, but you use the Gram Negative Bacillus flow chart.
How to Write the Lab Report
You are to write 2 lab reports on your patient. One report will be on the Gram Positive Cocci and the other will be on the Gram Negative Bacilli.
Each report must follow these instructions:
At the top of the page, draw the appropriate abbreviated flow chart for the isolate. This should be a shortened version of the appropriate flow chart on page 93; use only the branches you followed to identify your isolate. At the end of the last branch of the flow chart, write out the scientific name of your isolate. Check for the following:
the first time you list a species, use the entire name.
the first letter of the genus is capitalized; the species is entirely lower case.
the entire name should be underlined or in italics
For the text use paragraph form. Do not use numbers or bullets. Include the following:
First paragraph:
1) Identify the body site the patient specimen came from and the specimen numbe
2) Give the results of your microscopy:
gram stain reaction
morphology
cell arrangement
Describe the colony characteristics
B. Second paragraph
1) Refer to the flow chart and tell me about each test
A) Tell me what you tested for. For example, “I tested the isolate for an enzyme called catalase” or “I tested the isolate to see if it can use citrate as a sole carbon source”
B) For each test:
tell me what media or reagents you used.
tell me the results of the test. What did you observe? For example, did the hydrogen peroxide bubble, or did the lactose tube turn yellow?
tell me the interpretation of the results. For example, “The bubbling indicates that the organism produces the enzyme catalase” or “The yellow color tells me that this isolate can ferment lactose.”
C. Third paragraph
1) As a conclusion, tell me:
a) The identification of the patient isolate.
b) Refer to Appendix D. Look for the name of the patient isolate in the list for the patient’s body site. Tell me if the patient’s organism is typically:
-normal flora
-pathogen
-neither
-both
Combine the worksheet and your two reports into one Word document and then submit your reports.
