Cases in Clinical Infectious Disease Practice [Ekenna - Wiley - Blackwell]

In the era of cost cutting and lack of adequate health insurance for many patients, clinical skills and time spent with patients are not adequately compensated. Yet, these dwindling and underpaid skills: good history taking, observation of and listening to patients, and physical examination of patients, remain very essential to making and reaching a complete and accurate diagnosis. Expensive laboratory and imaging diagnostics while very relevant, should not replace these age-old skills that have served to enhance and maintain the doctor-patient relationship and human connection, a connection that is often necessary for healing. Dr. Ekenna has had the privilege and requirement to present on a regular basis real cases seen in his private practice over the last 15 years to medical students, residents, fellows and faculty as part of his teaching responsibilities with the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama. These cases will provide an illustration of how the infectious disease clinician processes and integrates data to arrive at a diagnosis. This type of hands-on approach is not given enough or adequate emphasis these days in training programs. The cases presented in this book will take the reader through initial patient encounter, through the history and physical examination, to simple laboratory findings and stains, to a final diagnosis, in a way that is accessible to researchers and students.