Hi

My name is Obaid. 

I am a doctor who has been working in Emergency Medicine for over 10 years - initially as a Specialist Emergency Physician in India, then as a A&E Registrar in London & now currently in A&E training in Leeds. I have a keen interest in ECG interpretation & teaching. More specifically, my interest in ECG teaching lies in the concept based approach to ECGs, rather than simply teaching pattern recognition. 

During my early years in EM, I struggled with interpreting ECGs & was frequently frustrated by my repeated missing out of findings in ECGs which I was felt was normal (or abnormal). Fortunately, soon after I had a mentor in a Cardiologist who set up a formal weekly ECG teaching series & taught me the basic concepts of ECGs & how to analyse ECGs beyond pattern recognition. Every week we used to spend 2 hours covering a topic from Leo Schamroth's 'An Introduction to Electrocardiography', and over a period of 6-7 months we covered the entire book. This was repeated over a couple of years and this training in ECG interpretation opened my eyes to a completely different method of ECG interpretation. This training also enabled me to read and understand complex ECG literature and concepts subsequently. I joined the aforementioned Cardiologist and together we conducted a number of ECG teaching sessions including workshops over the years. 

Since the past 6-7 years I have been experimenting with popularising concept based ECG interpretation in the ED. I spent the last few years identifying which concepts are relevant to ED, and how to simplify and practicalize it, so that it can be used to develop expert level ECG interpretation skills in the ED. My experience with all the concept based teaching sessions conducted so far has been very encouraging with great feedback & requests for more sessions on difficult topics. Concept based teaching does take slightly more time than usual ECG teaching, but then it is meant to be for those wishing to develop expert level ECG interpretation skills.  

I find that most ECG teaching resources (both online & offline) focuses on pattern recognition & there is very limited access to the basic concepts and deductive analysis of ECGs. And when there is deductive analysis, the discussions are usually at a level beyond the requirement of EM doctors. Hence, this is my attempt to bring together an ECG teaching resource where there is fine balance of understanding the relevant basic concepts & being able to apply it practically in day to day clinical practice for ED clinicians. 

I am aware that when I talk about basics & basic concepts, many clinicians think they are familiar with it. But my experience over the years have been that unless you have specifically been trained in ECGs or you have actively tried to learn it out of interest, you would be surprised at what you do not know.

The concept based approach to ECGs has been completely changed my outlook to ECGs & changed my clinical practice significantly. I hope it turns out to be just as life changing for you as well.

Best wishes

Dr Obaidullah Kunhammed