THE CHALLENGE
Auscultation is the practice of listening to the heart (or other organs) using a stethoscope as part of medical diagnoses. Proficiency in auscultation is difficult to measure because of the lack of standardized evaluation. Medical students need a convenient way to perfect their skills while instructors need a standardized method for assessment of auscultation competency. The Technology Innovation Center was challenged to meet the needs of medical students and other medical learners as well as instructors through the development of an online learning platform. The platform required hosting of over 5,000 cases from the Cardiac Auscultatory Recording Database and translation of those cases into an engaging, gamified quizzing format.
THE OUTCOME
Auscultation learners use Murmurquiz today to listen to heart sounds to answer basic questions about each patient case. Quiz questions lead the user to identify whether or not the heart murmur is abnormal and what corresponding diagnoses is likely. MurmurQuiz then scores the answers allowing learners to track their progress and highlight areas in need of improvement. Auscultation instructors are given an additional layer of access to create learning sets and track their student’s performance. MurmurQuiz is a website that’s accessible by the general public and has a user base of over 4,500 students and instructors with over 35,000 quizzes completed.
