Upset w/ the double earpiece Littmann Stethoscopes:(

[uRN4it]

I'm curious as to how many other people are having a hard time w/ their Littmann stethoscopes. I have screwed up B/P in 2 checkouts. I get one more chance before I get a write up. I'm really confident with taking BP too! Perhaps that's why I'm soooo frustrated. Me and an RN who practices w/ the students noticed that there is an inconsistency w/ the B/P results we were getting. At first I would hear sounds much higher than she would. For example I'd get 128/72 and she'd get 114/70. After this happened about 4X we decided to switch earpieces and she picked up the higher systolic pressures and me the lower. With all that tubing I wonder how accurate it is. Oh I brought up the fact that wish they had other double earpiece stethoscopes to use and guess what...they did! They are alot older and known to be "crappy" but on the otherhand me and the RN practicing w/ me got pressures within 2 mmHg apart. She put that "crappy" old stethoscope aside for me when I do my final checkout...Oh I hope it goes well:O

[TheSquire, DNP, APRN, NP]

I...think this might be a problem specific to your program. The two-headed steth my program used was much less nice than a littmann.

As an aside - I already knew how to take a BP before I entered my program, but I actually had to re-learn how to take it with my Littmann as it picks up a lot more extraneous sounds (such as my finger joints creaking as I hold the steth to my pt's arm...) than do lower-quality stethoscopes.