Description

This issue contains a number of educational cases and reviews. The editorial board have been keen to encourage submission of cases because they are often of great educational value. Single cases are not usually suitable for publication in scientific journals, but for educational journal, a clinical case may often bring to life a subject or topic. I would like to send a message to our readers to continue to contribute these cases and encourage their colleagues to do the same. We are not looking for rarities. The last thing I wish to encourage is a “twitcher” mentality. We are looking for cases with an educational content that would be suitable for a Grand Round format. Suitable cases are diagnostic conundra, complicated differential diagnoses, less commonly seen infections, travel or occupational related infections, hospital or community outbreaks and challenging microbes or antimicrobial treatments. The scope is very wide.

Also in this issue we publish the first part of a long but fascinating historical account by Ian Acres who qualified in the 1920’s. His son John Acres is a public health physician and discovered his father’s memoirs. As well as being a fascinating read, it is extremely educational, illustrates well how a doctor’s career and practice has changed in 80 years. The second part will feature in the next issue.

Finally we publish a review on the important topic of external quality assessment, in this case in relation to molecular techniques in microbiology. This is particularly relevant in the height of increasing number of laboratories taking up molecular techniques with chlamydia screening.

This is my last issue as editor-in-chief, as I hand over the editorial torch of this successful and I hope useful journal in a couple of months.

Matthew Dryden
Editor