MIIM20002: Microbes, Infections and Responses

5 x pre-prac online quizes (1% each), 4 x prac reports (5% each, only the best 3 are used), MCQ mid-semester test (20%) and MCQ/written end of semester examination (60%)

I will begin by saying that this is the best subject that I have taken at university to date. The coordinators are all fantastic and ensure everything is very well organised to guarantee that this subject is an enjoyable experience. They were always friendly, enthusiastic and had the best interests of students at heart.

Going into this subject, I wasn't sure whether I would like it. I have never been fond of practical work and was mainly taking the subject to keep my options for Micro/Immuno and Genetics majors open (as many biomeds do). I found the practical work to be thoroughly enjoyable. The demonstrators were all very helpful and it never felt rushed or poorly explained. The pracs tied in directly with the lecture material and helped to reinforce the lecture content. I personally enjoyed the way the each of the pracs were set up as case studies and involved finding the cause of an infection given a patient's symptoms and samples. Practical assessment was also pretty good. The pre prac quizzes are free marks. The prac reports on the other hand are not and take some work. Still, you are given a proforma for how you should structure your report and also given information on the material which you should be discussing in your report. If you follow this closely, averaging H1 on the reports shouldn't be a problem. Getting above 9/10 on a report is very difficult because it is just about impossible to address everything in the 700 word limit and I guess demonstrators are just picky about small things and unless your report is close to perfect in their eyes, you will lose marks. Nonetheless, we did get our reports back with feedback written on them to help us improve on our future reports.

Moving onto the lecture material, I would say this subject is somewhat similar to MCB, for those who have done it. There is lots and lots of content to get through and a lot of stuff to remember. For a 12.5 credit point subject, I would say it is one of the tougher ones.
Like all subjects, it starts off easy. The first 2 weeks are spent revising and extending on basic microbiology and immunology learnt in first semester, covering topics such as bacterial structure, virulence determinants, manipulating the immune response and vaccination.

The middle block of this subject is where the content becomes very intensive. This block lasts about 8 weeks during which you cover three different types of infections and their common causes, mainly the bacterial and viral ones, but you also might look at a few parasites as well. Firstly you cover gastrointestinal tract infections. Here you learn everything from the organism, symptoms, molecular basis for pathogenesis/replication, immune response, treatment and lab testing/diagnosis. As you can imagine, there is a hell of a lot to remember and lots of names are similar (e.g. you have bacteria known as EPEC, EHEC, ETEC). My suggestion is to make tables because it helps to cut out unnecessary content and makes things a lot easier to memorise. The other types of infections covered are respiratory tract infections and sexually transmitted infections. The layout of these lectures is similar to the GIT lectures, although there was less of an emphasis on knowing the specific molecules involved here which made it a bit easier.

In this block there is a lot of integration. You have a lecture or two on basic lab techniques for identifying bacteria and also a lecture on culture media. These are helpful for prac class. There are some lectures on the role of the mucosal immune system and natural flora. These were very interesting but also difficult and important. They also throw in some lectures on epidemiology, disease spread and management of the various types of infections. These more 'random' lectures are usually only addressed with MCQs. Nonetheless, learn them properly because the MCQs always try to confuse you and they may still ask for some of it in the written component of the exam. I suggest you do learn the epidemiology lectures properly because although they seem unimportant and like they are common sense, knowing the examples discussed will make your life much easier in an exam rather that having to make stuff up.

A lecture on antibiotics was given which was basically about the mechanism of action of various antibiotics and their names. There was also a lecture about vaccine development and non-protein antigens. These seemed really important and are worth paying close attention to.

The final part of the course addresses health care associated infections (HCAIs). It covers content such as hospital outbreaks and management, causes, antibiotics resistance, spread and transmission, sterilisation/disinfection, phylogentic analysis, more epidemiology, opportunistic pathogens and immunocompromised hosts. It was one of my favourite parts of the course because it was very clinical and all based around a health care setting. Again, a lot of this stuff was common sense but it is important that you actually learn it the way it is presented in the lectures because that is how they expect it written in an exam. Be sure to learn the chain of infection and the various ways in which interventions can be made at each link, because this was heavily emphasised and came up on the exam.

In terms of assessment, the MST was 40 MCQs and covered roughly the first half of the course.
The exam had 50 MCQs (60 marks) and 5 short answer questions (5 x 12 marks = 60 marks).
Each SAQ was broken down into smaller subparts (e.g. a) 6 marks, b) 4 marks, c) 2 marks) and overall each SAQ covered one of the 5 topics:
-Immune system
-GIT infections
-Respiratory tract infections
-STIs
-HCAIs
This exam structure forces you to learn just about everything which is presented to you. You have to answer all questions and parts. The exam is very fair. It is clearly written based on the lecture material and if you have done your work it is very straight forward and there will be no nasty surprises. I will reiterate that this subject is like MCB. There is a lot of work to get through, but if you do it, it is not bad at all. If you don't work regularly and slack off, then you are going to struggle.

Yes, with screen capture. It is a very good subject to lectopia. My attendance rate in this subject was woeful.

Sandra Uren (Co-coordinator), Helen Cain (Co-coordinator), Lorena Brown (Co-coordinator).
Damien Purcell, Roy Robbins Browne and Tim Stinear also gave a lecture each.

No. There are review lectures during the semester where practice questions are given out and addressed by the lecturers. The teaching staff also gave us some written questions at the end of the semester to practice on.

5/5

Don't buy them. They are not required. The slides and lecture material are all that is needed in this subject. The teaching staff themselves said they are only examining what is covered in the lectures.

3 x 1 hr lectures per week, 6 x 3 hr practicals throughout semester

2012, Semester 2

95 H1