ECG Interpretation
Like every single one of you as far as I can tell, I work in a library. Unlike the rest of you, I'm only there two afternoons a week, and all I do is (a) put books back on the shelves, and (b) tell people that the AV collection is on the next floor up (sometimes I wait for them to ask me first). On the plus side, the library is primarily medical, full of books like The Textbook of Pain, You Can't Catch Diabetes From Your Friend and Spine. Because I never write anything else here, clearly it's time for a new weekly feature, which I shall call "Lessons from the Stacks". (Actually I don't know if my library even has stacks; do any shelves count, or just the posh ones that patrons aren't allowed to see?)

This week, ECG Interpretation Made Incredibly Easy.

The Made Incredibly Easy series also covers fluids and electrolytes made incredibly easy, dosage calculations made incredibly easy, and pathophysiology made incredibly easy. They're all good, featuring a student nurse who specialises in looking confused:



There are even drawings of little hearts, and cheerful quiz scores with italicised medical puns like "we hardly need to monitor your progress":



.

ECG Interpretation is my favourite from the series, because it's the only one with a "treating symptomatic bradycardia" flowchart, the line "at times, it can be easy to mistake atrial fibrillation for junctional rhythm", and the advice

To help you remember where to place electrodes in a five-electrode configuration, think of the phrase "white to the upper right". Then think of snow over trees (white electrode above green electrode) and smoke over fire (black electrode above red electrode). And of course, chocolate (brown electrode) lies close to the heart.

In a world where there are so many things that aren't supposed to be easy (making a difference, stuff, life, school, losing people, and LIVING against my oppressive self and working to confront and eliminate my privilege, apparently), and the things that are supposed to be easy are relatively meagre (basically, geometry and catching flathead), it's nice to see that ECG interpretation can be one of the latter.

It's also nice to see, elsewhere, that this encouraging you-can-do-it view of medicine isn't new, with this charming 1877 advice:

I hear men say, "I have not learned anatomy or physiology because I have not had the opportunities," and I answer, the opportunities are all around you, you do not require a dissecting room, physiological laboratory, or costly apparatus. Any butcher will furnish you lungs, trachea, larynx, heart, liver, kidneys, etc., and any hog a digestive apparatus. Any dog that you can pick up on the road or street will furnish you a subject; chloroform him and examine the action of the respiratory apparatus, and the action of the heart; kill him and he offers an excellent subject for dissection of muscles and blood vessels. The "rooster" that wakes you too early in the morning is a most excellent subject. Take him in for rent, and having dissected him, prepare his skeleton for the office—he makes a fine specimen. Two or three years ago I stimulated our class to make dissections of dogs, and it was wonderful how they gathered them in off the streets, and still more surprising how much they learned of anatomy and physiology in this way.

(The follow-up quiz with "Four or five right: it's easy to spot that you've been dogged in your studies dog dog bark dog DOG DOG DOG" unfortunately isn't online.)

To summarise today's Lesson from the Stacks: it's white on the right, and snow above trees, except when sounded like "ay" giving battle in vain. If you try it, and find out whether that's the patient's right or yours, let me know.