I write a lot about teaching students at different levels.  I believe you have to teach at a level your students will understand, but also raise them up from the understanding they currently have. I am asked to teach a lot of "refresher" classes, but I always hope each student leaves with some NEW information.  My mentor, Donna Harden, often admonished me that I was "teaching at a level that was too basic".   I laughed and told her that I had a successful business preparing people to take HER classes! I really believe you can take away a person's curiosity by getting too complex too soon, and you can bore a good student by never giving them new information to savor.

Guru Content

That being said, I try to include content on this site for all levels of ECG students for their instructors to use in preparing classes.  I will soon be adding even more basic rhythm strips and monitor class materials. We will soon be able to categorize some of the Guru's content as BASIC, INTERMEDIATE, or ADVANCED.,

One ECG For Many Students

Some ECGs (and most 12-Leads) are a wealth of information for the basic student, intermediate, and advanced.  It is up to the instructor how much to present, and in what fashion.  This week's ECG of the WEEK is a wide complex tachycardia.  We teach our most basic students to call all wide complex tachycardias "V Tach", since this is the most common WCT in the emergency setting, and it is dangerous to misdiagnose or ignore VT.  However, we know that many mechanisms can cause interventricular conduction delay and wide QRS, including - but not limited to - bundle branch block, Wolff-Parkinson-White, LVH, myopathy, and ventricular pacing.  For those of you who teach more advanced students, I am including here comments from two of the Guru's valued ECG EXPERTS, Jason Roediger and Dr. Ken Grauer.  They both have great talent in ferreting out the true cause of dysrhythmia and conduction abnormalities, AND explaining it clearly.  In the case presented this week, the paramedics who cared for this patient assumed the rhythm to be V Tach and successfully cardioverted it.  Whether they got the diagnoses right or not, the patient was helped in this case. 

Available Resources

A quick search through some of the links on the "Favorite Sites" page of the Guru, including the favorite blogs on the right margin, will turn up a wealth of information on the diagnosis of WCT - presented at all levels.  It is a really fascinating subject.