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 1920s. His son John Acres is a public
health physician and discovered his fathers memoirs. As well as being a
fascinating read, it is extremely educational, illustrates well how a doctors
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.