How to Choose a Stethoscope

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name's Kayti Brosnan. I'm a registered nurse here in Austin, Texas, and today, I'm going to talk a little bit about how to choose a stethoscope. Some of the things you want to consider first are are you going to be handling pediatric patients or adult patients? What are you going to be using the stethoscope for? And how much are you going to be able to spend? Are you more doing pulmonary or cardiac, which would determine the kind of stethoscope that you're going to get. So a couple of things. One, there's different components of the stethoscope that affect the way that it works. There is the diaphragm of the stethoscope, which is going to go on the chest. It's a chest piece, and this is going to show high...or you're going to be able to hear high-pitched noises from this. So high-pitched noises would be pulmonary. There'd be breath sounds. And then the other side is called the bell or the open bell, which is going to...you're going to hear the low-pitched noises, so you're going to do that with cardiac. So a lot of times, if you're in the ICU or you're doing general medical surgical or intermediate care, you're probably going to want a diaphragm as well as an open bell so that you can best auscultate both the lungs as well as the heart. Another thing to consider is I've two different kinds of stethoscopes here. This one is a cheaper version. So we use these a lot of times in isolation because they can be thrown away. So you want to think: How much can I spend? Do I want a higher quality, which is going to use steel and aluminum versus a plastic -- plastic parts -- that aren't going to hold up over a long period of time? And you actually can't hear as well with these as you can with the better quality. So those are some of the things that you want to consider in hearing...in choosing a stethoscope. You want to figure out what size do you need. You're going to get a smaller size if it's for pediatric patients, a larger size for adult patients. And how much money can you spend? Can you get a higher quality, which is using better materials, is going to last longer over a period of time, as well as giving you a more clear and better sound that you're auscultating. So those are just some things to think about."