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Parental stethoscope use for infant heart rate counting

Accurate measurement of an infant’s heart rate by palpation or auscultation is challenging (1–5). The standard of care for infant heart rate assessment by a healthcare professional is by apical auscultation using a stethoscope (6–8). For the lay person, apical auscultation by ear to chest technique is often taught. For infants with a history of arrhythmia or who require rate controlling medications, parents are often requested to measure and to report their infant’s heart rate to their medical team. This reporting assists in medication dose adjustment or may indicate the need for urgent medical attention.While the use of a stethoscope by professionals for apical auscultation has been used in infants (9), the accuracy of this technique by parents has not been assessed. The objective of this study was to determine whether the use of a stethoscope compared with ear to apex auscultation improved the accuracy of heart rate counting by parents of infants. A secondary objective was to determine whether eliminating the parent’s need to count the infant’s heart beats using a tally counter for recording the number of heart beats would improve the accuracy.