Describe why microbiology is important for nurses to know?

Microbiology is one of the core subjects that nurses should know. Nurses stand on the first line when it comes to interaction with patients. Moreover, the nurse's duties usually include specimen collection and transporting them to the laboratory for tests. Hence, they potentially can act as carriers of the infectious agent in the hospital or even get infected. Microbiology knowledge can significantly lower the risk of mentioned things to happen. If a nurse can recognize symptoms of common bacterial disease and know the transmission paths of it he or she can prevent the spreading of the disease across the hospital or even further. It is the most obvious reason, but there are a lot more.

Proper communication with patients is a very important part of treatment. Nurses are the ones in charge of explaining the disease roots and the need for tests performed during treatment to the patients and their families. Same situation arising when it comes to routine vaccination to prevent these diseases. On the other hand, nurses routinely interpret the results of bacteriological tests and deliver them to the rest of the healthcare team. To properly do this deep knowledge of microbiology is needed.

Moreover, nurses are the ones who administer both oral and intravenous antibiotics and hence can play a crucial role in fast embiggening and terrifying antibiotic resistance. Inappropriate timing and length of antibiotic therapy, wrong antibiotic or rout of its administration and poor sanitizing lead to the arousal of novel resistant strains.

Finally, nurses monitor patients every day. Hence deep microbiology knowledge may help to notice the symptoms of bacterial disease, antibiotic resistance emerging or maybe even spreading of the disease in extreme cases.