EKG OF THE WEEK

 INTERPRETING AN EKG IS PROBABLY THE THING THAT MOST CLEARLY SEPARATES A PARAMEDIC’S ABILITIES FROM THAT OF OTHER PREHOSPITAL PROFESSIONALS.

IT’S NOT THE ABILITY TO GIVE MEDICATION BASED ON A PROTOCOL, INTUBATE, START AN IV, OR USE A STAIR CHAIR- WE COULD HIRE PEOPLE WITH NO OTHER MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE OR EXPERIENCE AND TEACH THEM TO DO THOSE SKILLS IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS.

IT’S THE ABILITY TO LOOK AT AN EKG, GENERATE AN INTERPRETATION, PUT WHAT YOU SEE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE PATIENT’S CLINICAL PICTURE, AND MAKE DECISIONS BASED ON IT THAT DEFINES PARAMEDIC CARE AND MAKES PARAMEDICS INDISPENSABLE.

It takes practice, and once we get out of medic school, practice is hard to come by. Sure, we may acquire lots of 12 leads, but are we actually getting practice, or are we sure we’re not just making the same mistake over and over without knowing?

This series is designed to just give you experience in reading EKGs. Some are interesting, some are completely normal, some are basically unreadable. The idea is just to go through the process of reading and interpreting to give you a structured system to fall back on and some techniques to sort out the challenging ones.

EKG of the Week #1 (Basics)

EKG of the Week #2 (STEMI)

EKG of the Week #3 (1st degree AV block)

EKG of the Week #4 (LBBB)

EKG of the Week #5 (RBBB)

EKG of the Week #6 (Long QT)

EKG of the Week #7

EKG of the Week #8

EKG of the Week #9

EKG of the Week #10 (Wandering pacemaker)