Step 1: The Problem In the past week, 40 inpatients of variable ages, sexes, and ethnicities at City College Hospital have presented with a visible skin infection. All patients showed initial symptoms including small, painful, erythematous lesions on their skin. About half of the patients developed a low-grade fever shortly after their topical symptoms arose, and many lesions were warm to the touch. The on-call doctor prescribed Keflex, a cephalosporin, to all patients presenting symptoms due to its widespread tolerability and effectiveness in treating gram-positive bacteria that is normally found on the skin, but in all patients these lesions rapidly grew larger, became more painful, and opened to form purulent lesions.
Step 2: The Hypothesis
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MRSA exhibits characteristic symptoms such as painful, red bumps accompanied with a fever, followed by more severe, pus-filled skin lesions (Mayo Clinic). Furthermore, all patients presented symptoms in a hospital setting while they were immunocompromised, which is one of the primary risk factors for MRSA in hospital inpatients (Green). Additionally, MRSA is resistant to traditional S. aureus antibiotics that are usually prescribed by doctors, such as antistaphylococcal penicillins and cepalosporins like Keflex (Moellering). Lastly, something as simple as failure of healthcare workers to wash their hands can spread MRSA from patient to patient (U Chicago), and this would explain why a large sample of inpatients have contracted the disease in a short amount of