News Item: iPods help docs improve stethoscope skills Temple Times, Temple University.
Abstract being republished online only with express permission from Temple Times.
Complete article available at : https://develop.temple.edu/temple_times/march07/DociPod.html
Rapid Rise in Cardiac Auscultation Skill After a Single 90 Minute Intervention:
A Quality Improvement Study Michael J. Barrett M.D., Archana Saxena M.D., Katherine A. Thomas
Temple University School of Medicine
Background
The ability of non-cardiologists to recognize common heart murmurs is only fair at best. Recent research suggests that cardiac auscultation is, in part a technical skill that improves dramatically with intensive drilling and repetition. In this quality improvement study, we measured the effect of listening to intensive repetition (400 times) of 5 common heart murmurs during a single 90 minute training session in a group of general internists.
Methods
A group of 149 general internists took a pretest consisting of common heart murmurs played in random order. Immediately following the test, they listened to auditory recognition exercises of five heart murmurs including aortic stenosis, aortic regurgitation, mitral stenosis, mitral regurgitation and innocent systolic murmur in a monitored session. These auditory recognition exercises consisted of 400 repetitions of each of the five murmurs played during a single 90 minute audio session. Immediately following the intervention, all participants took a post test consisting of the same murmurs played in a random order. The murmurs used in the training session were simulated heart sounds while the murmurs used in both pre and post tests were high quality recordings of human heart sounds.
Results
On the pretest, the average correct score was 60 +/-15% and increased significantly to 80.5 +/-15% on the post test, p< .001 by paired t-test. These posttest scores were similar to those reported for cardiologists.
Conclusions
Auditory recognition exercises of five common cardiac murmurs delivered in a single 90 minute session significantly improve cardiac auscultation skill in general internists. These results support the hypothesis that this is a technical skill which can be readily mastered by non-cardiologists using intensive repetition and drilling in a short timeframe.
