Auscultation is the practice of listening, usually with a stethoscope, to the chest. Two basic sub-categories are 1) heart sounds (and murmurs) and 2) lung sounds. Auscultation simulators are an attempt to teach medical trainees to recognize what they hear through the stethoscope by providing examples of either actual or simulated sounds. Simple simulators just provide audio files. More elaborate simulators allow the user to move the stethoscope over different areas of the chest, provide video or animation of the patient to show venous, arterial, or precordial pulsations, and supplement bedside physical findings with laboratory data such as a phonocardiogram, pressure tracings, echocardiogram, electrocardiogram, and radiology/angiography.
More information