The video starts with a consultation between a general practitioner and a patient complaining of loin pain and a fever. The GP diagnoses a probable urinary tract infection and asks the patient to produce a specimen of urine. He does not explain to his patient how best this should be achieved. Urine is an excellent bacteriological growth medium and specimens are easily contaminated during collection unless precautions are taken. In this case, the patient has a history of such infections and so we may presume that she has been instructed on how best to collect a sample to avoid contamination.

Graphics are then used to explain the symptoms and causes of kidney infections and of cystitis. There is a tendency to use medical terminology without explanation that may prove challenging for students who are not familiar with terms such as "micturition", "tachycardia", and "septicaemia", etc.,

Factors that predispose people to urinary tract infections are explored with interesting graphics.

Although the importance of avoiding contamination of urine samples was not explained to the patient, this deficiency is corrected in the video. The importance of collecting samples before antibiotic therapy commences is stressed since the presence of antibiotics in a sample may prevent recovery of the causative bacterium. The GP then test the sample with a dipstick; the results are indicative of the presence of leukocytes and nitrites in the sample, the latter being taken as a sign of the presence of bacteria.

At this point a medical microbiologist takes over the commentary and he explains the importance of examining samples rapidly because of the risk of contamination. He also explains how to minimise bacterial overgrowth if a delay in examining the sample is unavoidable. The film then follows a typical sample in its journey through the laboratory. It is surprising to see blood agar mentioned as being used for susceptibility testing. Trimethorpim is a common antibacterial used in the treatment of cystitis and its activity is prevented by the presence of folic acid, found in blood, thus giving rise to false reports of resistance to this antibacterial when tested on a medium containing whole blood. In fact, the medium used for susceptibility testing did not use whole blood and so the problem of false resistance to trimethoprim is avoided but the commentary does not make this clear. This is an important point because although trimethorprim is very useful in the treatment of cystitis, once an infection has ascended into the kidney, the drug is no longer effective because of the folic acid supplied from the bloodstream.

The special case of catheter samples is then described before the common causes of urinary tract infections are illustrated. The need for screening pregnant women for asymptomatic urinary tract infection is explained and the problems of diagnosing urinary tract infections in small children are explored before the video moves on to consider treatment of urinary tract infections. The video then explains how the risk of developing urinary tract infections may be minimised.

Renal tuberculosis is thankfully a rare infection in the UK but it is serious. The causative bacterium, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is difficult to handle. Because of the significance of this condition and the difficulties associated with its diagnosis, this infection has its own section of film, as is the management of recurrent urinary tract infection and the subject matter then focuses on radiological and ultrasound examination of the urinary tract. The film ends with surgical intervention to remove kidney stones and with a discussion of renal dialysis before returning to the patient seen at the start of the film, who is successfully treated with an antibacterial.