Third Year Medical Student ECG Teaching By Interactive Case Simulation

ECG interpretation is integral to many facets of medical care but challenging to teach. Few ECG teaching studies have looked at the benefits of small group teaching with interactive student involvement using a combination of technology-based learning and small group specialist facilitation. This interactive workshop will present a novel teaching approach that can be replicated at any institution. We will share a novel, case-based methodology to teach third year medical students ECG interpretation skills and build confidence in those skills. We will demonstrate a small-group teaching approach using a live scripted standardized patient in a clinical setting, along with commercially available software to show real-time exam, vital signs, telemetry and 12-lead ECG data. Next, we will demonstrate how students take a history from the patient, identify diagnostic and treatment orders, view data via live telemetry and 12-lead ECG, and come to a diagnosis and treatment plan. We will demonstrate how this approach helps build clinical history-taking skills, formulate reactions to common urgent cardiac symptoms and signs, and develop telemetry/ECG interpretation of diagnoses relevant to the student's level of training. We will show how we use the scenario to continue an ECG teaching session by a cardiologist or internist.