ABOUT

Who am I?

I'm a Registrar in Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology at University Hospital Southampton NHS

Foundation Trust, and I'm also a Medical Research Council (MRC) Clinical Research Training Fellow.

So I split my time between research (in the lab or in my living room) and clinical practice

(providing on-call microbiology advice to frontline healthcare workers - "Hello, Micro?").

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Why Hello Micro?

As doctors, a huge proportion of our work involves treating or preventing infection.

And yet, I'm always struck by how little of our training (in my case: medical school, Foundation Training and

Core Medical Training in the UK) is devoted to learning even the basics of microbiology.

This can lead to inappropriate choice, dose and duration of antibiotics,

and challenging interactions with the local infection team

(microbiologists, infectious disease doctors, and infection control nurses).

On a larger scale, suboptimal antibiotic prescribing is part of a really big problem:

antimicrobial resistance is an international crisis, causing 25,000 deaths and

2.5 million extra hospital days per year across Europe.

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My goal is to provide practical, succinct tutorials to non-microbiologists, covering topics like:

• A "thinking approach" to empirical antibiotic prescribing

• How to get the most out of your friendly local microbiologist

• Tips for managing common infections

• Making sense of those "special" tests (and when to order them)

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Hello Micro isn't designed to replace your local antibiotic guidelines or microbiologist advice,

but rather to work alongside these, by improving your confidence and skills.

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Full disclosure: I'm by no means an expert on these topics. That's why I've had help from Educational Advisors (Consultants in ID/Microbiology), and I've included references throughout to useful resources. 

Training in clinical microbiology and research means that I'm learning new things every day.

I hope you'll enjoy learning with me.

How did I end up here?

Having grown up in Greece, I moved to the UK when I was 18 to study medicine at the University of Cambridge. It was there that I developed a love for teaching: as Supervisor for Human Reproduction, I ran small group undergraduate tutorials for 6 years, and was elected Bye-Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge. I've since completed a 6-week teaching course by Johns Hopkins University, and gained experience as a clinical teacher (bedside teaching, simulation training, and lectures to large audiences).

I'm also passionate about working with Junior Doctors, and was elected Regional Chair of the British Medical Association (BMA) Junior Doctors Committee (JDC).

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Current research?

I'm part of a human challenge research team - basically, we insert harmless bacteria (Neisseria lactamica) into the noses of healthy adults. N. lactamica is found in the pharynx of over 40% of toddlers, and doesn't cause disease in healthy people. Our team have shown that challenge with N. lactamica can safely and reliably reduce colonisation by N. meningitidis (bacteria that can cause meningitis and sepsis). We're interested in using N. lactamica to prevent N. meningitidis infection in high risk populations (e.g. babies) and epidemic areas (e.g. Sub-Saharan Africa).

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If you'd like to read more about my research, please check out my profiles on: