Disease Detection & Diagnosis Workshop

The activities in this workshop teach pupils to think about how doctors and other staff diagnose illnesses and how new diagnostic tests are developed. Pupils also consider when screening programmes for diseases are appropriate.

How do doctors diagnose disease? First, they take note of a patient’s symptoms. Symptoms are physical signs produced by a disease, but they are not the cause of that disease. If you have a fever, this is your body’s response to an infection. The infection causes your immune system to respond by raising the body’s temperature, and the fever is the symptom of the infection.

This resource was made in collaboration between Centre of the Cell and the UK Clinical Research Collaboration.