As an RN in a primary care office, you recently took care o…
As an RN in a primary care office, you recently took care of a 15-year-old patient with severe gastrointestinal distress. Since the patient had experienced diarrhea, vomiting and a fever for 4 days, a stool culture was ordered in an attempt to identify a disease-causing pathogen. The laboratory results have just been faxed over to your office and you begin to read the data. After reading all of the information, you place a call to the patient and inform him that he is suffering from Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis infection. You explain to him that the ability of the technicians to identify the pathogen to the specific serotype was important to his treatment and was possible due to