Clinical Reasoning

I Think, Therefore I Am

 

Nurhanis Syazni Roslan

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The new curriculum has been keeping us busy but alhamdulillah, we are on track with a mini-version of EA.

 

In this issue, we feature Clinical Reasoning - an area that studies how physicians and medical students make decisions. This sits at the very heart of medical practice and has been a common in- terest to many clinical educators. In the past, it was thought that the novice uses analytical reasoning and the expert employs pattern recognition.

 

Nonetheless, we later learnt that unlike the chess master, who might win all the time after recalling 50,000 positions, making decisions and diagnoses in medicine is more than just retrieving previous cases. While this might not be our forte, we feel the need to summarize the evidence for bite-size reading - especially in the diverse state of clinical teaching.

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In this piece, we attempt to outline the evolution of the clinical reason- ing concept, list down the evidence in teaching clinical reasoning and share some food for thought in clinical reasoning assessment. We also share areflection from Muhammad AimanKamal, a Year 4 student who wentfor electives in Maastricht University, Netherlands and a piece from ourever-prolific alumni, Dr. Yeoh BoonSeng, where he writes on the impor- tance of basic science in harnessing clinical reasoning.

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Happy reading, and um, reasoning? 

ea