Frontiers in Medicine 01 frontiersin.org Assessment of the competence in electrocardiographic interpretation among Arabic resident doctors at the emergency medicine and internal medicine departments: A multi-center online cross-sectional study Amine Rakab 1 *, Sarya Swed 2 , Hidar Alibrahim 2 , Haidara Bohsas 2 , Yasmeen Abouainain 3 , Kirellos Said Abbas 4 , Yazan Khair Eldien Jabban 5 , Bisher Sawaf 6 , Bushra Rageh 7 , Majd Alkhawaldeh 3 , Israa Al-Fayyadh 3 , Mohamad Saad Rakab 8 , Sherihan Fathey 9 , Wael Hafez 10,11 , Amr Gerbil 10 and Emad Hassan Hassan El-Shafei 12 1 Clinical Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, Doha, Qatar, 2 Faculty of Medicine, Aleppo University, Aleppo, Syria, 3 Faculty of Medicine, University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan, 4 Faculty of Medicine, Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt, 5 Faculty of Medicine, Damascus University, Damascus, Syria, 6 Department of Internal Medicine, Hamad Medical Corporation, Doha, Qatar, 7 Faculty of Medicine, Sanaa University, Sanaa, Yemen, 8 Faculty of Medicine, Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt, 9 Ministry of Health, New Giza University, Giza, Egypt, 10 NMC Royal Hospital, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 11 Medical Research Division, Department of Internal Medicine, The National Research Center, Cairo, Egypt, 12 Critical Care Medicine, Mediclinic Alnoor Hospital, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Background: This study aims to assess the electrocardiographic interpretation abilities of resident doctors at internal medicine and emergency medicine departments in eight Arabic countries. Methods: An online cross-sectional study was conducted between October 7, 2022 and October 21, 2022 in eight Arabic countries. The questionnaire consisted of two main sections: the frst section included sociodemographic information, while the second section contained 12 clinical case questions of the most severe cardiac abnormalities with their electrocardiography (ECG) recordings. Results: Out of 2,509 responses, 630 were eligible for the data analysis. More than half of the participants were males (52.4%). Internal medicine residents were (n= 530, 84.1%), whereas emergency medicine residents were (n= 100, 15.9%). Almost participants were in their frst or second years of residency (79.8%). Only 36.2% of the inquired resident doctors had attended an ECG course. Most participants, 85.6%, recognized the ECG wave order correctly, and 50.5% of the participants scored above 7.5/10 on the ECG interpretation scale. The proportions of participants who were properly diagnosed with atrial fbrillation, third-degree heart block, and atrial tachycardia were 71.1, 76.7, and 56.6%, respectively. No statistically signifcant diference was defned between the internal and emergency medicine residents regarding their knowledge of ECG interpretation (p value = 0.42). However, there was a signifcant correlation between ECG interpretation and medical residency year (p value < 0.001); the fourth-year resident OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY Lynn Valerie Monrouxe, The University of Sydney, Australia REVIEWED BY Florian Recker, University of Bonn, Germany Basil Nwaneri Okeahialam, University of Jos, Nigeria *CORRESPONDENCE Amine Rakab amr2024@qatar-med.cornell.edu SPECIALTY SECTION This article was submitted to Healthcare Professions Education, a section of the journal Frontiers in Medicine RECEIVED 09 January 2023 ACCEPTED 24 March 2023 PUBLISHED 24 April 2023 CITATION Rakab A, Swed S, Alibrahim H, Bohsas H, Abouainain Y, Abbas KS, Khair Eldien Jabban Y, Sawaf B, Rageh B, Alkhawaldeh M, Al-Fayyadh I, Rakab MS, Fathey S, Hafez W, Gerbil A and El-Shafei EHH (2023) Assessment of the competence in electrocardiographic interpretation among Arabic resident doctors at the emergency medicine and internal medicine departments: A multi-center online cross- sectional study. Front. Med. 10:1140806. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2023.1140806 COPYRIGHT © 2023 Rakab, Swed, Alibrahim, Bohsas, Abouainain, Abbas, Khair Eldien Jabban, Sawaf, Rageh, Alkhawaldeh, Al-Fayyadh, Rakab, Fathey, Hafez, Gerbil and El-Shafei. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. TYPE Original Research PUBLISHED 24 April 2023 DOI 10.3389/fmed.2023.1140806