Effect of Psychoacoustic Learning on Cardiac Auscultation Proficiency in Nurse Practitioner Students.

Abstract

Assessment is a vital role of all nurses, yet cardiac murmur identification remains difficult for students. Cardiac auscultation is a technical, not intellectual, skill, and a psychoacoustic approach to learning is recommended. A psychoacoustic approach involves repetition of cardiac sounds to facilitate auditory perceptual learning. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a psychoacoustic learning modality for identification of cardiac murmurs by nurse practitioner (NP) students. A repeated-measures design was used. Following a pretest, NP students listened to repetitions of heart sounds, then took a posttest. Students were instructed to listen to the heart sounds weekly, then given posttests at 1 and 3 months. All posttest scores were higher than pretest scores; no significant difference in scores was noted between posttests. Psychoacoustic learning may improve cardiac assessment. Further research is recommended with prelicensure nursing and NP students.