This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Peter R. Lewis, MD
Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine Hershey

JAMA. 1997;278(21):1739.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.

—I concur with Drs Mangione and Nieman¹ that cardiac auscultation is a valuable clinical skill that merits added structured teaching for medical students and residents. While their method represents an improvement over the multiplechoice testing that is common to medical school and licensing examinations, identification of digitized cardiac sounds and murmurs is not a sufficient measure of clinical competency for physicians in training. Furthermore, the authors' statements regarding generalist physicians and health care utilization are not supported by the data presented.

In an earlier publication,² the authors cited a 1959 study by Butterworth and Reppert³ and concluded that physicians in training today are less skilled in cardiac auscultation than their predecessors. However, comparison of the data is hampered because the assessment of Butterworth and Reppert was a matching exercise and included a different type and number of cardiac events. Pressing their point regarding the present erosion of . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?