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 laboratory from primary care. At the beginning of each chapter a case scenario is used to identify critical steps in processing a particular specimen type, followed by quick action guides to assess current practice and implement necessary changes in procedure.

The award winning author of Clinical Bacteriology (BMA student book of the year 2005) has brought together a microbiologist, a primary care physician and a specialist in infectious disease, to produce this concise, highly illustrated guide, of value alike to primary care physicians, nurses, microbiologists and medical students.