Doctors can greatly improve their stethoscope skills and therefore their ability to diagnose heart problems by listening repeatedly to heartbeats on their iPods.

Previous research has shown that the average rate of correct heart sound identification by physicians is 40 percent.

In a new study, 149 general internists listened 400 times to five common heart murmurs during a 90-minute session with iPods. After the session, the average score improved to 80 percent. Read more >>

Reality Check!

Is there anything in particular that makes an iPod better for this task that any other mp3 player?

Heh. Probably just that more doctors own and use them. Clearly the value's in the podcast, not the player, but you must admit it's a clever application - quite an unusual "educational podcast".

You've got me wondering if there are any Morse Code podcasts out there, aimed at people preparing for the amateur radio license exams.

While I applaud any Ham that learns the code the FCC has finally dropped the other shoe and the Morse Code element is no longer required for any license level.

I would rant a little but I got tired and gave up sometime during the last 15 - 20 years of debate over this.

The best part of it for me is that we are finally free of the arguments.

Of course even though the requirement is gone it is still a valuable skill and an enjoyable part of the hobby so a good "Pod Code" program could still be valuable. Actually, it wouldn't take much, just someone to generate or convert some classic practice "tapes" to mp3.

Now the doctors can greatly improve their stethoscope skills and their ability to diagnose heart problems by just listening repeatedly to heartbeats on their iPods?? That should be a great one thing to recognize heart problems.....