Why hearing more matters: Building real-world auscultation skills
Andreas Schriefl, PhD | CEO and co-founder of eMurmur
Auscultation is one of the fastest, most accessible ways to assess a patient. All it takes is a stethoscope — and knowing what to listen for.
In practice, that second part is harder than it sounds. In busy clinical settings, time is limited and patient volumes are high, making it difficult to consistently build experience with a wide range of heart and lung sounds. At the same time, the value of listening is clear. In a recent Littmann survey, nearly 9 in 10 clinicians said they’ve identified a critical condition based solely on what they heard through a stethoscope.
We developed the Littmann® Learning app as a way to help clinicians build this critical skill and experience more sounds than they might encounter in day-to-day practice. It includes a wide range of real heart and lung sounds and guided lessons to help you gain confidence through repetition, even just a few minutes at a time.
Why listening — and practicing listening — still matters in modern clinical care
Auscultation became very real to me when my niece was three months old. During a routine checkup, her provider thought they heard a heart murmur, but wasn’t confident enough to make a call and referred their family to a specialist. The uncertainty was stressful — especially as it was their first child. The specialist determined it was an innocent murmur and everything was fine, but the experience showed me how a clinician’s confidence in interpreting heart and lung sounds can be shaped by the time they’ve had to practice and the patients they’re exposed to.
Explore why listening closely is still essential in modern care.
How the Littmann Learning app helps you learn heart and lung sounds
We built the app around a simple goal: to give clinicians more opportunities to hear, recognize and learn from these sounds. Our app delivers auscultation training in an easy-to-access, guided and engaging way.
Download the Littmann Learning app
Built for students, educators and clinicians
It was important to us to make an app that works for clinicians in all stages of their career.
- For students, it’s a practical way to build foundational listening skills. You can repeat sounds, compare examples and learn at your own pace.
- For educators, it’s a structured way to demonstrate, compare and discuss sounds, as well as allow students to track and share progress.
- For clinicians, it’s a convenient way to revisit and refine skills, especially for sounds you don’t encounter frequently in everyday practice.
It’s also available in multiple languages. If you speak Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, French or English, you can train on heart and lung sounds through modules in the language you’re most comfortable with.
Download the app to get more consistent listening practice
Ultimately, our app makes it easy to stay connected to an essential skill in patient care. You can start with a free version to explore core features and unlock more content — including a larger sound library — through a subscription. Educators can also sign up for a free trial to evaluate the app for teaching and coursework.
Download the Littmann Learning app today in the App Store or Play Store.
About the author
Andreas Schriefl, PhD
CEO and co-founder of eMurmur
Andreas Schriefl is the CEO and co-founder of eMurmur, a company developing clinical auscultation AI and digital learning tools to improve how heart and lung sounds are captured, analyzed and understood. With a background in engineering and cardiovascular research, Andreas became interested in auscultation after seeing firsthand how difficult it can be to confidently interpret heart sounds in real-world clinical care — and how technology could support both clinical decision-making and medical education.
Through the Littmann Learning app, he and the eMurmur team aim to make auscultation easier to learn, easier to teach and easier to revisit over time.
Follow Andreas Schriefl on LinkedIn