For years there has been concern among medical educators that cardiac auscultation
is an important clinical skill that is being lost.
1
,
2
In one study
3
the median rate of identification of 12 cardiac events was only 20% for medical students
and 19% for medical residents. Studies of primary care physicians have found that
proficiency in cardiac auscultation is less than 40%.
4
,
5
These deficiencies in cardiac auscultation are especially important because internists
are now being tested on their ability to recognize abnormal cardiac sounds during
their board recertification process.
6
After a review of the psychoacoustic principles of auditory learning,
Recertification: continuous professional development. Am Board Intern Med. 2002:2. Available at www.abim.org/moc/semmed.shtm.
7
we hypothesized that cardiac auscultation is more of a technical skill than a purely
cognitive one and thus could be mastered through the use of intensive repetition.
To test this hypothesis, we measured the effect of listening to an average of 500
repetitions of each of 6 abnormal heart sounds on the proficiency of cardiac auscultation
in third-year medical students.To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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References
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Recertification: continuous professional development. Am Board Intern Med. 2002:2. Available at www.abim.org/moc/semmed.shtm.
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Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
December 29,
2004
Received in revised form:
December 29,
2004
Received:
December 1,
2004
Identification
Copyright
© 2006 Elsevier Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
