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Resources for revision

General microbiology:

Standards for microbiological investigations:
The SMIs cover the laboratory identification of most common bacteria, parasites and fungi and the processing of different samples. There is a small amount of information of serological testing and also quality assurance which is worth reading. There is more information contained in these than you need, the flow diagrams at the back are a good starting point.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/standards-for-microbiology-investigations-smi

Parasitology

CDC website

Hands down the best parasitology website – quizzes, life cycles, photo library – just excellent! Remember however it is a US website so dosing and treatment can vary a bit from the UK

https://www.cdc.gov/dpdx/az.html

Para-site – again good for photo quizzes

https://parasite.org.au/para-site/introduction/index.html

Mycology

Adelaide Fungi website

Mould identification quizzes -another great website – bear in mind it also does veterinary mycology so don’t be too surprised it they show you a picture of a chicken..

https://mycology.adelaide.edu.au/virtual/

Microfungi.net

http://www.microfungi.net/

A Manchester based website – some good modules on fungal staining and microscopy

Tropical Medicine

DTM&H practice questions website

http://dtmh.co.uk/

Public Health guidelines

https://www.gov.uk/topic/health-protection/infectious-diseases

There are numerous UKSHA guidelines covering different organisms. These are easy things to write questions on in particular post exposure prophylaxis (think viral rash in pregnancy, rabies, meningococcus, pertussis etc) so it is important to be aware of these.

Health Protection Reports

Summaries of any current outbreaks/ incidents of infection relevance.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/health-protection-report-latest-infection-reports

The Green Book

Vaccines! Also includes details on post exposure management for relevant bugs e.g VZV, Hep B etc

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/immunisation-against-infectious-disease-the-green-book

Clinical Guidelines

NICE guidelines

They have recently developed some nice short summaries of their major infection guidelines including UTI management and Lyme disease diagnosis which are worth reading.  The clinical knowledge summaries can also be helpful

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/published?type=apg,csg,cg,mpg,ph,sg,sc

BIA website (guidelines section)

Although this is not a comprehensive list, this is a good place to find links to relevant NICE and national infection guidelines.

https://www.britishinfection.org/guidelines-resources/published-guidelines/

HIS website

HIS guidelines and infection control relevant videos 

https://www.his.org.uk/resources-guidelines/his-guidelines-and-guidance/

BASHH guidelines 

GU medicine excluding HIV 

https://www.bashhguidelines.org/current-guidelines/

BHIVA guidelines

HIV guidelines

https://www.bhiva.org/guidelines

Miscellaneous but important!

Health technical memoranda

These are not all relevant but the water quality, ventilation, decontamination and waste documents are all useful. Make sure you know all about endoscopes and theatre ventilation. 

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/health-technical-memorandum-disinfection-and-sterilization

Also with particular relevance to endoscopy – prion safety from the ACDP:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-from-the-acdp-tse-risk-management-subgroup-formerly-tse-working-group

EUCAST website

It is highly unlikely that there won’t be some sort of question on resistance! Know how to identify particularly resistance mechanisms and the expected antibiograms. The Eucast expert rules and documents on laboratory identification are great for this. 

http://www.eucast.org/expert_rules_and_intrinsic_resistance/

Books 

As a caveat to this list, I did not actually use many and in particular I steered clear of the larger textbooks (Mandell etc) as I thought there was just too much information in them. I would however recommend:

Damani – Manual of infection prevention and control

This is clearly written and not too big and broken up into short chapters. A new version has recently been released

Moran, Torok, Cooke.  Oxford Handbook of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology

You are likely to be familiar with this – you will need more information than it contains in certain areas but it is great for an overview of the topics you need to cover.

  • Infection specialty exams – basic information
  • CICE
  • FRCPath Part II (microbiology)
  • FRCPath Part II (virology)
  • Resources for revision

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