The Firefly digital otoscope as an aid to teaching otoscopy in primary care

Teaching otoscopy within primary care can be a challenge, as there is a need to teach both the psychomotor skills required to perform otoscopy, as well as the interpretation of the clinical findings.[1] Basic otoscopy skills are often lacking and the clinical slides that are used in classroom teaching to show both the normal anatomy of the ear and the commonly encountered pathological findings are usually taken with special medical and photographic equipment, so they are often unrepresentative of what primary care otoscopists will encounter in their clinical practice. This can make it difficult for the novice otoscopist to translate what they are seeing through an otoscope to the images that they have seen in a textbook, or from an on-line library source. In a Canadian study, it was found that 95% of medical graduates were not comfortable with their otoscopy skills and that on testing general practitioners (GPs) and paediatricians in their ability to make an accurate otoscopic diagnosis there was less than 50% accuracy.[2] This article describes how a digital otoscope can be used as a teaching aid in primary care to train medical students, doctors in training and practice nurses to develop or improve their otoscopy skills and clinical knowledge.