MICR 3443 Pathogenic Microbiology (Spring 2005)

Project Ten

Assigned Wednesday, April 13. Due Wed, April 27 by class time.

This is a cooperative learning assignment. Form a group of five students and generate a report summarizing one of the major issues listed below. You are free to pick any one you choose from the following list. Each student has a particular role to play relating to the issue. The roles are clinician (the medical doctor seeing patients, analyzing efficacy of treatments, developing patient care procedures and applications of treatment), epidemiologist (tracking disease, predicting risk factors, predicting causes of outbreaks, modeling pathogen life cycles, methods to limit transmission of the disease), researcher (scientist in the lab, performing research on the pathogen to discover new treatments and understand the pathogen better), medical ethicist (developing policies which are strong morally and legally for patient treatment and governing research), and public health officer (learning how the disease affects the population as a whole, disease effects on urban vs rural populations, disease effects in America vs other countries, education of the public related to disease prevention). If you wish to have 6 team members, an optional role is that of patient (invent a case study representing a typical patient of that disease, also try and guess what it would feel like to have that disease, how does treatment affect your life, etc.). Each team member is responsible for one section of the report, and should write a draft copy of the report, obtain written input on that draft from other team members (at least two), then write the final copy. Include 5 references (no more than two from the internet) in each section. In the final printed report, each person has a 2 page summary of their role (with 5 refs), which includes: a brief description of the problem and recommendations of potential solutions to the problem with strengths and weaknesses of each approach (the majority of the paper). The final report includes: 1) each of the 5 sections, 2) one cover page for the entire report with a title for your proposed solution plan, and a list of all group members and their roles, 3) one page short section of a coherent strategy for confronting the problem and how their each role relates to the other roles in carrying out that strategy (tie each of the 5 sections together so they from a united plan). Attach at the back of the report the edited copies of the draft of each section. Clearly indicate who was responsible for each section. If a group member does not participate and complete their section, indicate this, and they will not receive credit. Turn in a written copy in class and also email an electronic copy of the final report (all reports together in one word or rtf file) to me ().

MAJOR PROBLEMS IN MEDICAL MICROBIOLOGY

1. the rise of multiantibiotic resistant bacteria

2. the threat of bioterrorism, mainly smallpox and anthrax

3. the resurgence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, or the HIV-MTB co-epidemic

4. the emerging infectious disease Hanta virus or Ebola virus orE. coli O157:H7 or West Nile virus or SARS (just pick one)

5. major opportunistic infections in the rise of immunocompromised patients (Pseudomonas and Mycobacterium)

6. Clostridium and Candida infections associated with antibiotic treatment

7. persistent nosocomial infections from Staphylococcus and Enterococci

8. phage therapy