Culture media preparation and performance testing

Anyone who prepares or approves culture media, and quality staff who audit media records.

Pairs naturally with the microbiological techniques course and stands alone for staff whose main role is media preparation.

The syllabus below is the standard shape of the course. It is adjusted to the matrices, methods and instruments you actually run, which is agreed before delivery rather than discovered on the day.

• Preparation

  Weighing, water quality, dissolution, pH adjustment and its timing

• Sterilisation

  Autoclave cycles, load effects, over-sterilisation damage and heat-sensitive additions

• Storage

  Conditions, shelf life, and recognising media that has deteriorated

• Growth promotion

  Test organisms, inoculum level, acceptance criteria and productivity ratios

• Selectivity

  Demonstrating that selective media both grows the target and suppresses the rest

• Records

  Batch identity, and linking a plate back to the medium batch it was poured from

Courses are written around what a delegate can do afterwards, not what was presented to them. These are the outcomes this one is built to produce.

1. 01Prepare and sterilise media without degrading it, and explain why the cycle is what it is.
2. 02Run a growth promotion test with defensible acceptance criteria.
3. 03Demonstrate selectivity as well as productivity for selective media.
4. 04Trace a suspect result back to a specific batch of medium.

Media is the reagent that most microbiological results depend on, and it is prepared in-house more often than any other critical reagent. An over-autoclaved selective medium loses selectivity and produces false negatives that nothing downstream catches.

Growth promotion testing that checks only that something grew misses half the point. A selective medium has to suppress as well as support, and only testing both demonstrates it.

Delivered over 1 day, at your site or at the laboratory, in English or Arabic. Sessions are built around real records, real data and real failures rather than slides of clause numbers, and the people delivering them spend the rest of the week doing the thing being taught.

Group size is agreed in advance — practical sessions are capped so that everyone works rather than watches. An attendance certificate is issued to each delegate on completion.

Ask about any subject not listed here. If it is not something we teach well, we will say so rather than build it for the sake of the booking.