LOOKING Is Not SEEING and LISTENING Is Not HEARING: Effect of an Intervention to Enhance Auditory Skills of Graduate-Entry Nursing Students

Inspection/observation and listening/auscultation are essential skills for health care providers. Given that observational and auditory skills take time to perfect, there is concern about accelerated students' ability to attain proficiency in a timely manner. This article describes the impact of music auditory training (MAT) for nursing students in an accelerated master's entry program on their competence in detecting heart, lung, and bowel sounds. During the first semester, a two-hour MAT session with focused attention on pitch, timbre, rhythm, and masking was held for the intervention group; a control group received traditional instruction only. Students in the music intervention group demonstrated significant improvement in hearing bowel, heart, and lung sounds (p <.000 1). The ability to label normal and abnormal heart sounds doubled; interpretation of normal and abnormal lung sounds improved by 50 percent; and bowel sounds interpretation improved threefold, demonstrating the effect of an adult-oriented, creative, yet practical method for teaching auscultation.