Academia usually create separate streams for teaching and research as both are demanding and challenging. The diagnostic or clinical care defines the medical professional and maybe pursued exclusively as it is the holy grail of medicine. Mutually exclusive streams are required to reach targeted known goals. However, we are living in a dynamic interactive world of host, agent and environment which is constantly churning and changing the patterns of known diseases as well as allowing for emergence of newer diseases such as COVID-19. The skill sets that are required to meet the challenges of the unknown are essentially problem solving.

Patient care often presents with clinical dilemmas that also require problem solving skills and recourse to published literature beyond the realms of a textbook. There is a dearth of such published literature in the Indian context. The clinical expertise is rich in India as is the clinical resource in patients who represent the ethnic diversity of India across the socioeconomic spectrum. A resolution of a clinical dilemma may get documented as a case report. However, case reports may not be sufficient evidence for a change in clinical practice. The laboratory serves as an excellent point across several disciplines to document aberrations or resolutions of many clinical dilemmas or even identify new patterns of a disease. The clinicians need solutions to the clinical dilemma to improve patient outcomes including preventing death. Therefore, for effective care there must be crosstalk between the clinicians and the laboratory and a systematic documentation of the aberrations that is publishable. Crosstalk brings in synergy through collaboration and adds quality.

The need to question forms the basis of research. The digitally empowered student of today needs to be nurtured to question, systematically perform and analyse the research work develop confidence and faith in the results and learn problem solving skills. Teaching must inculcate the ability to question, to sift through enormous literature available at the click of a button to cull out only what is relevant. The talk is centred on using specific examples from microbiology and clinical virology as well as clinical care to explain how teaching, diagnostics and research can be interwoven to strengthen the goal of better patient outcomes or provide cost effective healthcare solutions.

Dr Padma Srikanth recently retired as Professor and Head, Department of Microbiology from Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute and as Associate Dean Research, SRIHER after 25 years of service. She received her medical undergraduate training at Kilpauk Medical College, Chennai and her postgraduate training in clinical microbiology at Christian Medical College Vellore. She has extensive experience in clinical microbiology and clinical virology and is passionate about teaching, diagnostics and research. She established the Molecular biology and Clinical virology laboratory in 2005 the first of its kind in a medical private university at Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research which has NABL accreditation for several molecular viral diagnostic assays and was recognized by ICMR for SARS COV-2 and by Directorate of Public Health Tamil Nadu for Swine Flu. She has several publications in indexed National and International journals and in non-indexed journals, coauthored 2 manual and 2 book chapters. She firmly believes in networking and has established both national and international collaborations. She has completed funded projects by DST, DBT -BIRAC, RSSDI and SPARC (Ministry of Education, Government of India) She has been awarded four patents and has filed for four patents. She has served as guide for many MSc, MD and PhD candidates over the last 25 years. She was instrumental in starting two novel postgraduate and undergraduate MSc and BSc Medical Microbiology and Applied Molecular Biology programs at SRIHER an ability enhancement course called scientific working and writing skills, and a blended course called pen to paper. She was nominated as member of core group by Medical Council of India (NMC) for curricular reforms for the national medical undergraduate program.