Public and Patient Involvement

Left to Right: Nisha Shah, Enrique Castro Sanchez, Esmita Charani, Charlotte Grady, Laura Garcia Alvarez

CIPM at Imperial Festival - 11th May 2012

CIPM were proud to be asked to hold a stall in the Research Zone at the first annual Imperial Festival, which took place on 11-12th May 2012.  The Centre prepared several interactive activities to get attendees thinking about hand-hygiene, health and how much they really knew about infectious diseases in the UK and around the world. 

The public gladly got their hands dirty, leaving fingerprints in agar jelly before and after cleaning their hands with an alcohol wipe. The public were encouraged to complete CIPM's Academic Research Nurse Enrique Castro-Sanchez’s “Community Questionnaire about Infectious Diseases”. Enrique's aim was to demonstrate how a community epidemiologist might collect data and report it to assess (for research purposes) the health concerns and health literacy of people attending the Festival.

Esmita Charani, Senior Lead Pharmacist, showcased her award-winning mobile technology application "Imperial Antibiotic Prescribing Policy" (IAPP), which helps reinforce accurate and safe prescribing of medicines. Dr Laura Garcia Alvarez (Research Associate), Nisha Shah (Research Assistant) and Charlotte Grady (Education Assistant) were on hand to answer questions and talk attendees through the CIPM posters and handouts.

The agar plates

Imperial staff, students and the general public left their fingerprints in agar jelly. These samples, taken on Friday evening, were then incubated for one and a half days, to allow the bacteria culture to grow.

Once they were removed from the incubator they were photographed; you can see the specimens below. The left hand side of the plate shows the "before cleaning" sample, and the right hand side of the plate shows the "after cleaning" sample.

Each of the plate samples from Imperial Festival were numbered, so that they could be identified.