Online resources are becoming increasingly important in undergraduate education and have been associated with a number of advantages and positive outcomes on students’ learning experience. However, online resource use by veterinary students for physiology learning remains poorly understood. Thus the present questionnaire-based study aims to investigate the extent to which first- and second-year veterinary students use online resources, including online video clips and social media, in their physiology learning and if this is influenced by factors of age, gender, entry status, or year of study. One-hundred and twenty-two students across seven UK universities completed the survey. Traditional resources (the lecturer and recommended textbooks) were the most preferred sources for physiology learning. Nonetheless, 97.5% of students used Internet search engines to explore physiology topics. Furthermore, students’ tendency to contact their instructor regarding a physiology question was low. Rather, 92.6% said they would first search for an answer online. Particularly popular was the use of online video clips with 91.1% finding them valuable for physiology learning and 34.21% finding them more useful for understanding physiology than university taught material or lecture slides. YouTube was the most common online video clip platform used by students. Most students stated that they would enjoy interacting with course materials on an instructor-led social media page, but only 33.9% currently use social media to discuss physiology-related issues with classmates. Additionally, most students expressed concerns regarding the reliability of online resources but attempts to fact-check these resources were relatively low. Therefore, online resources represent an essential part of veterinary students’ physiology learning and this suggests that educators can significantly improve student engagement and understanding of physiology by integrating these resources.

The long QT syndrome (LQTS) is largely treated pharmacologically with β‐blockers, despite the role of sympathetic activity in LQTS being poorly understood. Using the trigger–substrate model of cardiac arrhythmias in this review, we amalgamate current experimental and clinical data from both animal and human studies to explain the mechanism of adrenergic stimulation and blockade on LQT arrhythmic risk and hence assess the efficacy of β‐adrenoceptor blockade in the management of LQTS. In LQTS1 and LQTS2, sympathetic stimulation increases arrhythmic risk by enhancing early afterdepolarizations and transmural dispersion of repolarization. β‐Blockers successfully reduce cardiac events by reducing these triggers and substrates; however, these effects are less marked in LQTS2 compared with LQTS1. In LQTS3, clinical and experimental investigations of the effects of sympathetic stimulation and β‐blocker use have produced contradictory findings, resulting in significant clinical uncertainty. We offer explanations for these contradicting results relating to study sample size, the dose of the β‐blocker administered associated with its off‐target Na+ channel effects, as well as the type of β‐blocker used. We conclude that the antiarrhythmic efficacy of β‐blockers is a genotype‐specific phenomenon, and hence the use of β‐blockers in clinical practice should be genotype dependent.

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