Evaluation of the Accuracy of Electrocardiogram Interpretation in Emergency and Critical Care Medicine Residents in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Background

An electrocardiogram is a diagrammatic representation of a heart's electrical activity. This technique can detect life-threatening conditions within minutes. It is one of the major investigative modalities at which emergency physicians should be accurate. The accuracy of emergency residents varies from country to country, with improvement in interpretation as the year of residency increases. There have been no published papers on ECG interpretation among emergency residents until now, but studies on graduating medical students have shown low competency.

Methods

A cross-sectional study was conducted on emergency and critical care medicine residents of Tikur Anbessa Specialized Hospital and Saint Paul Millennium Medical College. Data were collected from April 2021 to September 2021 via a structured questionnaire. The data were entered, cleaned, edited, and analyzed via SPSS Version 26.0 statistical analysis software. Descriptive statistics and bivariate and multivariate binary logistic regressions were used to analyze the data.

Results

Fifty-seven emergency and critical care medicine residents were able to participate in this study, 33 (57.9%) of whom were from Addis Ababa University and 24 (42.1%) of whom were from Saint Paul Millennium Medical College. The average percentage of EMCC residents who interpreted the ECGs was 29.5%. Only 10 residents (17%) were able to correctly interpret > 50% of the ECGs. Most of the residents who participated in this study were Year 1 residents, followed by Year 2 residents. Among the 15 ECG abnormalities, the commonly identified were polymorphic ventricular tachycardia, normal sinus rhythm, and a double-chamber pacemaker. The year of residency (AOR 3.34) was found to be significantly associated with greater performance in ECG interpretation.

Conclusion

According to this study, the interpretation accuracy of ECGs by emergency medicine and critical care residents is low, which is comparable to the findings of studies performed in South Africa and Australia.