Remote Teaching of Canine Cardiac Auscultation Using Digital Phonocardiograms.

This article evaluates the impact of additional online training using digital phonocardiograms (DPCGs)—visual representations of heart sounds synchronized with electrocardiograms (ECGs)—on veterinary students’ ability to identify normal and pathological canine heart sounds, including murmurs and arrhythmias. Thirty-six veterinary students were randomly assigned to either self-study or webinar training groups utilizing DPCGs, or a control group without extra training, and tested before and after a four-week period. Both training groups showed significant within-group improvement in detecting and characterizing heart murmurs and arrhythmias compared to the control group, although no improvement was observed in recognizing normal heart sounds or differentiating arrhythmias from normal sounds. The study concludes that remote training with DPCGs enhances students’ auscultation skills, but the specific contribution of DPCGs requires further investigation with larger sample sizes and comparison to training without DPCGs.