Aims

The aim is to provide general practitioners (GPs) and medical students with the skills to analyse and interpret 12 lead electrocardiograms (ECGs).

Main themes

Originally intended to enable belgian GPs to acquire, analyse ECG tracings and make a correct diagnosis at reading them, the course is essentialy practice-oriented. It contains a brief description of theoretical and physiological bases of the ECG. The emphasis is put on the technical aspects, the various patterns of the normal ECG and the main ECG abnormalities encountered in clinical practice (ventricular hypertrophies, conduction defects, myocardial infarction and ischemia etc…). A special attention is devoted to rhythm abnormalities which are often primarily managed by the GP. Also, a description is given of the various situations where the ECG diagnosis can be " life-saving " (ionic and electrolyte disturbances, drug toxicity, long QT etc…).

Content and teaching methods

At the end of the course, the GP or medical student should be able to recognize and correctly diagnose the most current ECG patterns seen in daily pratice.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

The apprenticeship is facilitated by the teaching of vectorial principles, allowing " intelligent " understanding of the ECG instead of a " cook book " for ECG diagnosis… Also, the criteria of ECG interpretation are usually correlated with the clinical condition and the results of other diagnostic tests (echocardiography, cath lab etc…). The course is quite interactive with a large utilization of slides and power point presentation.

Other credits in programs