Stethoscopes

Apparently, picking your stethoscope is not a light decision.

I just ordered mine the other day. It's "ocean blue" and cost $115. The most expensive one, a cardiology stethoscope, was somewhere near $250! There were actually way more colors than you would expect stethoscopes to come in. Some of my friends got purple and orange. There were also options such as peach, burgundy, plum, hunter green, and Caribbean blue.

You might not have realised that there's a lot of factors that go into a good stethoscope. There are so many, in fact, that we were given a guest lecture on how to pick one.

Obviously there's the ear pieces and how comfortable they are, but you should also consider length, thickness of the tube, material of the tube, weight of the bell, type of bell, and structure of the bell. My goodness. If you're going to be outside a lot, you want one that dampens noise (like wind) really well. Going into small animals? Maybe you want a pediatrics stethoscope, since the organs you're listening to are so small.

There are also fancy digital stethoscopes, which are not very good and are outrageously priced, but you can record something you hear and send it to all your vet friends.