“In my experience, many nurses working outside of critical care haven’t had a lot of training in reading and understanding basic ECGs.”

Have you ever learned something new and thought to yourself, how did I miss this? Why didn’t I know about this sooner?

Now more than ever people are finding information by searching for it on their own. The days of reading a print journal cover to cover are, for the most part, behind us. Many readers find articles by searching for a specific topic of interest. While this approach can be useful, you risk missing out on all that rich content in a journal issue you didn’t know that you needed to know.

One of AJN’s great features is our broad coverage of nursing topics.

We intentionally put together each issue to bring nurses the information they need to stay on the top of their professional game. For this reason, I like to highlight our columns here every now and then. (See, for example, my spotlight on our Nursing Research, Step by Step column).

Another great column nurses might be missing out on is Strip Savvy, written by Nicole Kupchik and Joel Green. This month’s installment, “A Case of an Asymptomatic Older Adult,” is free until February 17. Nurses with limited ECG experience, seasoned nurses in need of a refresher, and instructors looking for teaching materials can all benefit from the articles in this column. In my experience, many nurses working outside of critical care haven’t had a lot of training in reading and understanding basic ECGs. Yet patients in the acute care setting often undergo cardiac monitoring at some point during their hospital stay.

Imagine receiving report from the ED that your patient is in “normal sinus rhythm.” You know that’s a good thing, but you don’t know what it means in relationship to other potential rhythms the patient could develop or the context of the patient’s current health condition. It’s important for nurses to understand this part of the clinical picture, even if they’re not performing an ECG or caring for the patient on a monitored unit.

Help for staying competent in reading ECG strips.

Also, considering the role cardiac rhythm plays in ACLS algorithms, a certification many hospitals now require of med/surg nurses, it’s important to stay competent in reading ECG strips. Those who need to know only BLS for employment would also benefit from learning about ECGs to gain an understanding as to why some rhythms are shockable and others are not. Even in my private psychiatry practice I use my ECG knowledge, such as when I explain to patients the risk of a prolonged QTc interval as a medication adverse effect.

Each Strip Savvy column starts with a case and the patient’s rhythm strip. The reader can examine the strip before the authors explain how to interpret it and how it connects to the physiology of the case study’s symptoms and diagnosis. In honor of American Heart Month, in addition to the current month’s article, AJN will also make the first column in this series, “A Case of Bradycardia and Extreme Fatigue,” free until February 17.

If you subscribe to AJN, you can access all six previously published Strip Savvy articles, with more to come in the future.

Christine Moffa, PhD, APRN, PMHNP-BC, senior clinical editor, American Journal of Nursing