| > Is ECG output really that easy to read and unambiguous? Not even close. But nurses generally don’t know how to read EKGs except for the most obvious findings, so when they say “it’s all fine” either they mean they don’t see something very conspicuous (ST elevations, widened QRS, absent p waves), or they’re just giving you the default “stay calm, and wait for the doc to read it” comment. The only non-docs I’ve ever seen impress me with their EKG reads have been some experienced EMTs, really experienced critical care nurses / mid levels, and some experienced cardiology mid-levels. In short, people that do it every single day and have been doing it for a long while. And even they don’t do it with an instant glance. EKGs are more complicated than they look. Each lead gives you a different slice through the heart; some of the leads are in the xz axis, and some are in the xy axis, and findings are modified by height, weight, position, metabolic profile, etc. Basic EKG reading takes an hour to learn; being good at it takes forever. The catch about the above study is that they are doing the easiest possible thing: categorizing arrhythmias. That’s the part you can learn in an hour. Doing it “as well as a cardiologist” just isn’t impressive. Give me a couple of weeks with a bright high schooler and they’ll be doing rhythm classification as well as most doctors. It’s “precisely which part of the heart is malfunctioning, what part of the vasculature or conduction pathway or whatever does that implicate, and based on the patient’s medical history what underlying diagnosis does that imply? And what is the next best step in medical management?” that cardiologists interpret EKGs for. |