• Question: what is your favorite aseptic technique in your job?

    Asked by anon-181914 on 15 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Donna MacCallum

      Donna MacCallum answered on 15 Jun 2018:

      To make things sterile… I prefer autoclaving.
      My favourite technique is culturing individual unknown bacteria and fungi – streaking them onto plates to single colonies, then extracting DNA and identifying the species

    • Photo: Ashley Akbari

      Ashley Akbari answered on 16 Jun 2018:

      We do not really work with pathogens or items which we would need to prevent contamination/infections

    • Photo: Claire Donald

      Claire Donald answered on 17 Jun 2018:

      I work with cells and viruses a lot in my job so aseptic technique is very important to stop my experiment being contaminated with nasty germs (like bacteria, fungi and moulds). An easy way to keep things bug free is to dip instruments in alcohol and pass them through a flame to burn the alcohol off. Probably best not to try that at home though.

    • Photo: Alex Haragan

      Alex Haragan answered on 18 Jun 2018:

      As a doctor I get to do quite a few of these!
      >
      This will sound weird – but if someone is in urinary retention (which is to say, they can’t pee) and has been for hours, putting in a catheter is quite satisfying for them and its rewarding as a doctor to instantly relieve someone’s discomfort!
      >
      Leaving surgery to one side – I actually always enjoyed putting in ascitic drains. These are tubes you put into someone’s tummy if it has become big and swollen with fluid (for most patients I saw this was because of cancer but there are many other reasons). Difficult to say why but I do quite like it!

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