What is an EKG
(electrocardiogram)?
It is a tracing the
represents the heart's electrical activity through small electrodes that are
placed on a patient's skin. EKG's are quick and painless, and those very
tracings, that seem foreign to the untrained eye, provides important
information about the patient's heart. EKGs can: check your heart rhythm, see
if you have poor blood flow to the heart muscle (ischemia), diagnose a heart
attack, and check on things that are abnormal, such as thickened heart muscle.
In fact, the EKG is the initial test of choice for those patients that are
complaining of chest pain or difficulty breathing.
This past quarter in PA
school we took a diagnostic method course. During this course, we focused on
learning on how to read EKGs and interpreting imaging. The first part of the
course was learning how to interpret EKGs. Over the span of 2-3 weeks, we had a
crash course on how to interpret EKGs. Clearly, this is not an ample amount of
time to become efficient on interpreting EKGs, but at least, we were able to
learn the basics.
A local cardiologist
instructed us on how to interpret EKGs, and on the first day of class, he
provided us with a few resources that were found to be super helpful in the
past. The resource that stuck out to me the most was "Rapid Interpretation of
EKG's: 6th Edition." At first, I was hesitant to buy it because I know my time
was limited due to the heavy course load I was taking this quarter, but one of
my classmates had the book, and he said that it was very helpful, so I decided
to buy the book.
My thoughts...
I am a very visual
learner, and I hate books that are too "textbooky" (if that makes any
sense), and to my surprise, this book was the opposite of this! It broke down
every aspect of the EKG that you could thing over in a very simple, rudimentary
way for the naive learner. Important concepts were reiterated, which I LOVED! I
will never forget how to determine the axis because the book stressed
interpreting the axis throughout the book. There were various checkpoints
throughout the book that had you testing your knowledge, and I was able to
determine my strengths and weakness, and this allowed me to go back to certain
chapters and focus more on that material.
I highly recommend this
book. I honestly do not think I would have done as well if I did not have this
book, and I highly recommend this book for those who are starting out learning
EKGs. This book is a good reference as well because it explains every aspect of
the EKG in its entirety in a very basic manner. I know this book will come in
handy, especially on my ER and internal medicine rotations, when I start
rotations and when I am practicing.
Disclaimer: This post is
not sponsored, and everything that is said in this post is based on my personal
opinions. This book worked for me, and I am not guaranteeing the same success
for everyone. This was not my only resource for studying EKGs.
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