ENHANCING RESIDENT COMPETENCY ASSESSMENTS IN TRANSTHORACIC ECHOCARDIOGRAPHY

Transthoracic Echocardiography in Mice

In recent years, murine models have become the primary avenue for studying the molecular mechanisms of cardiac dysfunction resulting from changes in gene expression. Transgenic and gene targeting methods can be used to generate mice with altered cardiac size and function, and as a result, in vivo techniques are needed to evaluate their cardiac phenotype. Transthoracic echocardiography, pulse wa...

Critical Care Transthoracic Echocardiography

A 70-year-old man with end-stage heart failure and a continuous-flow left ventricular assist device received repeated electrical discharges from his biventricular implantable cardiac defibrillator. Although the electrocardiogram demonstrated ventricular fibrillation, the patient was awake and in no distress. A focused transthoracic echocardiogram was performed to assess ventricular function rev...

Basic transthoracic echocardiography.

Appreciating the Strengths and Weaknesses of Transthoracic Echocardiography in Hemodynamic Assessments

Transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) is becoming the choice of hemodynamic assessment tool in many intensive care units. With an ever increasing number of training programs available worldwide, learning the skills to perform TTE is no longer a limiting factor. Instead, the future emphasis will be shifted to teach the users how to recognize measurement errors and artefacts (internal validity), t...

Assessing resident competency in an outpatient setting.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The Grand Rapids Family Practice Residency Program has been using an ongoing "spot check" method to evaluate global competencies of family medicine residents in the ambulatory setting. This paper describes and assesses this evaluation method. METHODS During each clinic session, preceptors evaluate residents on core ambulatory clinical skills. Evaluations emphasize di...