Introduction

Abstract

I have a faculty friend who says that details of curriculum and teaching methods are unimportant; when medical students decide what they want to learn, they’ll learn it. The more experience I have the more I recognize the wisdom in this view. It is as applicable to electrocardiography as to any other discipline, of course, but with a difference; neither criteria for competence in electrocardiography, nor guidelines for its practice, are standard. There are calls from time to time for adequate training (“teaching” would be a better word) by qualified and experienced physicians, but criteria for what is adequate are not given. Familiarity with the current cardiology literature sometimes seems to be the only test of qualification, and numbers of tracings the only measure of experience. Standards for completeness and usefulness of the interpretation are not mentioned, and explanation is not often required.