hey future nurses welcome back to our simple nursing YouTube channel today we're diving into a crucial skill that you'll need for both your enlex exam and in your future career we're talking about calculating the heart rate on an ECG now if you've ever watched a medical drama any graay Anatomy fans in here you've probably seen a character look at an ECG Monitor and confidently announce the client's heart rate but how do they do it and more importantly how can you calculate the heart rate on an ECG accurately by the end of this video you'll be more confident in using multiple methods to determine the heart rate so let's get started first let's quickly review the basics this is an ECG strip and you'll need to be familiar with the pqrs T wve so check out my other video here to learn more about this keep in mind that the r-wave this little Peak right here is particularly important in our video today today we're going to explore three main methods to calculating the heart rate so let's dive into the 300 rule this is a quick way to estimate the hard rate or regular rhythms you can see the clearly marked big squares in blue here we simply count the number of big squares between two consecutive R waves here and then we're simply going to divide 300 by that number so remember this is the 300 rule so in this example here I have about five boxes in between the r Peaks so we have 1 2 34 5 and so 300 / 5 is 60 beats per minute pretty simple right now let's move move on to the 6C method this is especially useful for irregular rhythms like atrial fibrillation or even sinus arhythmia so you can see here that there's 30 big squares so remember 30 big squares equals 6 seconds and here's how it works you simply count the number of R peaks in the 30 big squares and multiply that number by 10 so for example if you count six R waves in the 30 big squares you simply Take 6 * 10 which is 60 beats per minute now the 6-second method can also be used to calculate the atrial rates to Simply count the p waves instead of the r waves and the p-wave is right here before the r Peak now for additional methods let's look at some other methods you might encounter for fast rhythms there's a small square method simply count the small squares between the r waves and divide 1500 by that number so for example inside this big blue box we have five small squares so there's five big boxes times five small boxes in each one of those big ones which is 25 so, 1500 divid 25 is 60 now this is a poor example because it's not a fast heart rate it's borderline bra cardia but technically on the enlex and nursing exams it's normal so remember practice makes perfect try these methods on different ECG strips to build your confidence and before we wrap up up here's a quick quiz to test your understanding use the 6-second method to calculate the heart rate on this strip pause the video if you need more time the correct answer is 80 beats per minute did you get it right all right that's it for today's lesson on calculating the heart rate for an ECG remember this skill is crucial for the enlex and your future nursing career so keep on practicing and you'll Master it in no time if you found this video helpful don't forget to like And subscribe and check out our blog here for a condensed overview of this topic so don't be scared be prepared thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next videos