How to Perform an ECG / Electrocardiogram - Clinical Skills - Dr Gill
Whilst perhaps not a core day to day skill of the medic, being able to take an ECG is a valuable skill. Although perhaps less than the interpretation of the ECG which we will look to cover in another video
The ECG or Electrocardiogram is a core part of any cardiology examination, and thus would expect to undertake in order to complete the cardiac exam - as can be seen here
This video will go over the ECG lead placement for a 12 lead electrocardiogram.
The 12 lead ECG consists of 6 chest leads - lead V1-V6 and four cables to the limbs, allowing the recording of 6 limb leads, leads I, II, III, aVF, aVR and aVL
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[Music]
hello
my name's dr gill i've been asked to do
an ecg of yourself today
could i confirm your name and date of
birth please yes my name is david
rogerson
16 to the 10th to 92. so before we start
do you have any problems with your heart
that you're aware of
you had any palpitations your heart
beating strangely no
okay and at the moment do you have any
chest pain no
super so if i could get you to take a
t-shirt off please and just lie back
on the bed
okay so what we need to do now is i need
to put my hands on your chest
in order to place uh the leads
i'm just going to put my hand on your
chest and we need to find the maneuvers
journal angle
which is there it's the second
intercostal space
third fourth okay so
we have one there
and we mirror that on the opposite side
so if that's four then here is five and
we want the mid
curvicular line so that is
that we've got
six if we could move your right arm out
a little bit
so six is the same but mid auxiliary
line
five goes between six
four and three is between
two and four and if you put your hands
on your thighs
please then we need to put on the limb
leads so going on the outside
of your wrist on both sides the styloids
and then we want to go to the lateral
malleolus so the outside
of your ankle and same again
over here right we'll switch the machine
on
one seven eight
and let's get you wired up so
we'll go with the chest leads first
okay so we're just going to start off on
the far side
so there's six
five and
four
and then on the other so we've got three
two and one
okay with the chest leads done you need
to move to the limb leads
so we've got red for your right arm
and we've got yellow for your left arm
then we've got black for your right foot
and green for your left foot
okay that should be all right let's
start the machine
so if you relax back for me
and stay night as still as you can
okay so we've got a good trace coming
through there
so if we stay nice and steady for a
moment
just nice deep breath in and out
okay that looks good
cracking
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okay
so we've got an excellent tracer we've
not got any obvious abnormalities but
we'll
look over that in a little bit more
detail in a moment but
that should complete things for the time
being so let's unclip it
there's the first ones and then the
bottom full
okay if you'd be kind enough to take off
the tags yourself that way it won't
hurt you at all
and we'll just put them on there so we
can bend them afterwards thank you
okay so that looks a nice normal ecg
and with good data there
all right there's your shirt do you have
any questions about that ecg
no thank you thanks for your time
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you
