About Us

What this platform is

Cardiology Course Online is a teaching platform for clinicians who look after patients with heart disease. It exists for a narrow and stubborn problem: the gap between knowing what a guideline says and knowing what to do with the patient actually in front of you. Textbooks close the first gap well. The second one closes only through structured teaching, worked cases, and the chance to ask someone who has made the decision before.

Everything here is delivered online, so a physician in a district hospital has the same access as one in a teaching centre in a capital city. Nothing depends on travelling to a venue, taking a block of leave, or being attached to a particular institution.

What we teach

The subject matter is clinical cardiology as it is practised, taught across the areas the work actually falls into: coronary intervention and acute care; electrocardiography, echocardiography and cross-sectional imaging; heart failure, arrhythmia and risk assessment; prevention, lipids and blood pressure; and the patients in whom the usual rule does not hold cleanly, such as pregnancy, older patients carrying several conditions at once, and patients whose kidney disease constrains every option you would otherwise choose. A separate strand supports candidates preparing for postgraduate examinations.

The emphasis throughout is on decisions rather than description. Recognising a pattern matters, but what changes outcomes is knowing what follows from it: what to do first, what can wait, what you are committing to, and what you will do when the first plan does not work.

Who it is for

The teaching is written for postgraduate residents in internal medicine, cardiology trainees and interventional fellows; for physicians in general and district hospitals who manage cardiac presentations without a cardiologist on site; and for specialist nurses and technicians working in coronary care units, catheterisation laboratories and echocardiography rooms. Established cardiologists use the material to keep a specific area current.

It assumes a clinical vocabulary and a working knowledge of cardiovascular physiology. It is not patient education, and it is not written to be read by people making decisions about their own care.

How the teaching is structured

Four elements carry the teaching, and each does something the others cannot.

• Live online classes. Sessions held at a stated time where reasoning is worked through out loud and participants can put questions directly to the teacher and to each other. This is where the questions that only occur to you at the bedside get answered, and where a decision can be argued rather than asserted.
• Self-paced modules. The structured content, organised so you can work through it in the hours you actually have. Residents on rotating duties rarely have a predictable evening; the modules are built to be picked up and put down without losing the thread.
• Unfolding clinical cases. Cases released in stages, the way a patient presents. You are given the presentation and asked what you would do; the next stage gives you the result you asked for, or the complication you did not anticipate, and asks again. Because you commit before you see the outcome, these cases test judgement rather than recall, and they show exactly where a plausible chain of reasoning goes wrong.
• Course books as set reading. Each course names the titles it draws on. The books hold the detail that live teaching cannot retain for you, and they stay with you long after the course ends. Titles are listed in the course book catalogue, where each eBook can be bought and downloaded instantly.

Beyond the courses, a mentorship arrangement is available for clinicians who want work on their own practice rather than on a syllabus, and applications for it are made through the cardiology mentorship page.

Who leads the teaching

The platform was founded and is led by Dr A M Thirugnanam, MD, MSICP, FSCAI, Ph.D., Senior Interventional Cardiologist, based in Hyderabad, Telangana, India. The teaching approach reflects an interventional practice: cases are taught the way they arrive, decisions are examined at the point where they are actually made, and the material is written by someone who still has to act on it.

How we approach teaching

Three commitments run through the material. The first is that teaching should be honest about uncertainty. Where the evidence is thin or the guidance disputed, the course says so rather than flattening it into a rule that will fail you at the bedside. The second is that clinical judgement is trainable, but only against cases where you commit to an answer before you see the outcome. The third is that access should not depend on geography or institution. A clinician managing an acute coronary syndrome in a small hospital carries the same responsibility as one in a large centre, often with fewer people to ask, and the teaching is built for that reality.

If you want to know whether a particular course suits your stage of training, or which books to read first, use the contact page on this site and describe your role and what you are trying to strengthen.