Microbiology Department, Oxford Road Campus

Laboratory opening hours

The laboratory is open:

Monday to Friday: 8.00am – 5.00pm*

*Outside of working hours contact the on-call Biomedical Scientist through Switchboard (0161 276 1234) for urgent requests)

Saturday: 8.30am – 12.30pm

Sunday: 8.30am – 12.30pm

The total workload is approximately 600,000 specimens per annum.

Clinical advice

For clinical advice during normal working hours (Monday to Friday): Tel: 0161-276-8788/8854

• General culture results are available 24 hours after specimen receipt (at the earliest), and sensitivities usually after a further 24 hours.  For samples such as blood cultures and CSF, the Microbiologist will usually inform the clinicians of initial significant results as soon as they are known.
• Internal users, please refer to the antibiotic guidelines, in the first instance, for the commoner microbiology enquiries. Please refer to Trust antimicrobial guidelines via the intranet homepage
• New or junior doctors should discuss queries with their own clinical team, before calling the Medical Microbiologist.
• For Medical Microbiology advice for the more complicated cases, the Medical Microbiology team should be contacted on 0161-276-8788/8854 via switchboard.
• For Infection Control advice alone, the Infection Control Nurses can be contacted on extension 64042 or via switchboard.
• Clinical advice on Mycology results/problems is available from Dr A Dodgson (0161) 276 6010 or Dr K Dodgson (0161) 276 5746

Additional tests

Additional tests can be requested on all samples by contacting the laboratory, and providing an additional request. Most samples are stored for a maximum of 7 days, although it must be recognised that used samples will have a limited volume and for some tests old samples may influence the culture results.

Results

All urgent clinically significant results will be telephoned back to the requesting ward by a BMS or a Microbiologist. Urgent negative results can be accessed using HIVE.

For other results/enquiries during normal working hours: Tel: 0161-276-8788/6333/4306

Out-of-hours service

The Microbiology out-of-hours service is an emergency service.

A limited number of investigations are offered out of normal laboratory hours (ie. 17.00 – 08.30 weekdays, 12.30 to 08.30 Saturdays, and 08.30 to 08.30 Sundays and Bank Holidays) where urgent results are required. The duty BMS can be contacted through hospital switchboard (0161 276 1234).

The following tests are available as appropriate:

• Paediatric Emergency Admission urines Children <3 months old
• Paediatric Emergency Admission urines Children >3 months old with a Dipstick positive for Leucocytes or Nitrate. CSF (Cell Count & Culture) Samples requiring TB investigations cannot be processed out of hours.
• Ascitic / Peritoneal Fluid (Cell Count & Culture)
• Joint Fluids (Gram stain & Culture) Crystal investigations are performed by Histopathology, cell differential performed by Cytology (separate sample and request required)
• Sterile Fluids from all areas will be considered for processing after discussion with the BMS on call, samples requiring investigations that require lone containment level 3 working will not be performed.

For urgent out of hours processing of samples adopt the following protocol:

1. Call the Biomedical Scientist (BMS) on-call, via the switchboard after you have collected the specimen.
2. Transport of the specimen to the laboratory in a timely fashion is the responsibility of the ward, not of the BMS on-call and should be via the portering system or pneumatic tube.

Contacting the MMMP

Contact details for infection services

Manchester Medical Microbiology Partnership (MMMP) main telephone: 0161 276 8788

Option 1: Microbiology and Virology Results and General Enquiries (Routine Hours- 8:30 – 17:00pm)

Option 2: Virology (Routine hours- 9:00 – 17:00pm)

1. To notify urgent specimen for Virology within routine working hours

2. For Virology medical advice within routine working hours

Option 3: Microbiology (Routine Hours- 9:00 – 16:45pm)

1. To notify urgent specimen for Microbiology

2. Medical Advice for the Oxford Road, Trafford or Wythenshawe sites

3. Medical Advice for Tameside Site via switchboard

Option 4: Out of Hours

1. Virology or Microbiology On-Call Services via switchboard

2. Tameside Site via Switchboard

Option 5: Vaccine Evaluation Unit / Meningococcal Reference Unit clinical advice (Routine Hours- 8:00 – 17:00pm)

Option 6: Wythenshawe specimen tracking advice (Routine Hours 8.30 to 17:00pm)

Out of hours contacts

Contact via the hospital switchboard

Results service

Please check for results on ICE-desktop or Chameleon before calling as results are updated onto these systems in real time. General culture results are available 24 hrs after specimen receipt (at the earliest), and sensitivities usually after a further 24 hours. New information for specimens is usually available by 11.30am.

For ‘special’ samples such as positive blood cultures and CSF samples the microbiologist and/or virologist will inform the clinicians of initial significant results as soon as they are known.

Sending specimens to the laboratory

Microbiology and virology samples are ordered by clinicians using ICE-desktop. Notify the lab in advance if samples require urgent processing, eg CSF samples.

Samples from Trafford are transported to the microbiology laboratory daily. Results will be available as above.

Clinical Infection Advice from Microbiology and Virology

The clinical microbiology team is available for routine advice 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday. We advise on infection queries from the Oxford Road and Trafford sites. During these times you can expect to speak with a microbiology registrar, Clinical Scientist, or consultant covering clinical queries. An on-call microbiology registrar, Clinical Scientist, and/or consultant are available out-of-hours via switchboard.

The telephone advice service can have busy periods. If your query is about empiric antibiotic choice, make sure to consult the antimicrobial guidelines to see whether the answer to your query can be found before calling.

Please note that we have a daily microbiology handover on weekdays between 11.15am and 12.15pm and if you have an urgent enquiry during this time you can contact the on-call microbiology consultant via switchboard.

Contacts details:

Microbiology, normal hours 9am – 5pm: Ext 66333

For specialist virology advice, see contact details here Out of hours Microbiology and Virology, via switchboard

When calling for microbiology advice, please have up-to-date information about your patient to hand, including the following:

• Date and reason for admission
• Current clinical problem list and question for infection team
• Overview of recent observations, blood results, scan results and dates
• History of antibiotic courses given during this admission
• Details of known antibiotic allergies
• Overview of relevant microbiology results and culture sensitivities (important when calling microbiologist out-of-hours)

When calling out-of-hours, junior medical staff should consider whether the query can be resolved through discussion with senior members of your team. If the query cannot be resolved, the senior clinician should decide whether the case should be discussed urgently with the on-call microbiologist or whether non-urgent cases can be discussed the following morning.

Contact details

Name	Specialist Interest	Telephone Number	email
Dr Stephanie Thomas Head of Service Consultant Medical Microbiologist	Intensive Care Infections (including ECMO) Complex vascular surgical infections including the diabetic foot Public Health	(0161) 291 4754	Stephanie.Thomas@mft.nhs.uk
Dr R Rajendran Associate Medical Director (Infection Prevention and Control) & Clinical Head of Division for Laboratory Medicine and Consultant Medical Microbiologist	Regional Medical Lead for IPC NHS North West	(0161) 276 4185	Rajesh.Rajendran@mft.nhs.uk
Dr Eamonn Trainor Interim Clinical Lead Consultant Medical Microbiologist	Infection prevention and control Enteric infection Critical care Clinical governance		eamonn.trainor@mft.nhs.uk
Dr Kirsty Dodgson Consultant Clinical Scientist	Outpatient antimicrobial parenteral therapy	(0161) 276 8841	Kirsty.Dodgson@mft.nhs.uk
Dr Andrew Dodgson Consultant Medical Microbiologist		(0161) 276 6010	Andrew.Dodgson@mft.nhs.uk
Dr Louise Sweeney Consultant Medical Microbiologist	Adult Haematology & Transplant Critical Care Antimicrobial Resistance	(0161) 276 5745	Louise.Sweeney@mft.nhs.uk
Dr Fiona Price Consultant Medical Microbiologist	Education and training Neonatal infection Infectious Endocarditis Diagnostic pathway optimisation	(0161) 291 2884	fiona.price@mft.nhs.uk
Dr Hamed Sharaf Consultant in infection (Medical Microbiology / Infectious Diseases)	Diabetic foot infection Vascular graft infections Infections in critically ill patients	(0161) 276 6333	hamed.sharaf@mft.nhs.uk
Dr Ranajoy Sankar Bhattacharya Consultant in infection	Surgical infections, antimicrobial stewardship and Infection control	(0161) 291 2819	ranajoy.bhattacharya2@mft.nhs.uk
Dr Zoie Aiken Consultant Clinical Scientist	Paediatric haematology & transplant Paediatric critical care Molecular diagnostics & laboratory development Clinical Scientist education & training	(0161) 276 6333	zoie.aiken@mft.nhs.uk
Dr Ahmed Qamruddin Consultant Medical Microbiologist	Antibiotic Guidelines Endocarditis Audit Infection in Paediatric Intensive Care, Cystic Fibrosis & Eye	(0161) 276 4282	Ahmed.Qamruddin@mft.nhs.uk
Specialist Registrars Office		(0161) 276 6333
Rachel Jones UKHSA Regional Head of Laboratory Operations/ Head BMS MMMP		(0161) 276 5747	Rachel.Jones2@mft.nhs.uk
Simon Eccles Laboratory Manager		(0161) 701 4703	Simon.Eccles@mft.nhs.uk
Katherine Mather Deputy Laboratory Manager		(0161) 276 4909	Katherine.Mather@mft.nhs.uk
Daniel Hughes Deputy Laboratory Manager		(0161) 276 3577	Daniel.Hughes@mft.nhs.uk
Gemma Edwards Deputy Laboratory Manager		(0161) 701 6689	Gemma.Edwards2@mft.nhs.uk
Patrick Farrell Deputy Laboratory Manager		(0161) 276 8822	Patrick.Farrell2@mft.nhs.uk
Hospital Switchboard		(0161) 276 1234

(Last reviewed November 2023)