How to listen to lung sounds
Other platforms explain it with text and video. In Making Synapses you practice it on the patient.
Lung sounds are compared side to side, front, back and sides.
Step by step
Set up
Quiet room, diaphragm on bare skin, patient breathing deeply through the mouth. [1]
Order
Ladder pattern side to side, from top to bottom, back then front. [1]
Normal
Vesicular sounds over most of the lung. [1]
Crackles
Short popping sounds: fluid or opening airways. [1]
Wheezes and rhonchi
Musical sounds (narrow airways) and low snoring sounds (secretions). [1]
Stridor and rub
Stridor over the neck is urgent; rub is a grating sound. [1]
Record
Sound, location, phase of breathing. [1]
Common errors
- Listening through clothes.
- Only the front.
- Missing stridor.
Practice it in Making Synapses
In Making Synapses you do this on the patient, not on paper: every step goes on the checklist with a score, and in Teach mode Blocky tells you what comes next.
Making Synapses cases that train this skill
- Anaphylaxis in a child
- Tuberculosis, contact with symptoms
- Newborn respiratory distress
- Intussusception
- Sickle cell pain crisis
- Post-operative atelectasis
105 Making Synapses cases train this skill: open the case library
Sources
- Open RN, Nursing Skills 2e (Chippewa Valley Technical College) (CC BY 4.0)
- NCCPA PANCE Content Blueprint
- Stanford Medicine 25 (bedside exam)
Steps adapted from Open RN, Nursing Skills 2e (Chippewa Valley Technical College), licensed under CC BY 4.0. Facts and steps also follow NCCPA PANCE Content Blueprint; Stanford Medicine 25 (bedside exam). Making Synapses is not affiliated with these organizations. Updated: 2026-10-11.