Clinical Reasoning year 1

Content

Clinical Reasoning year II

Objectives and Content
The Clinical Thinking course aims to build a bridge between the classroom and the clinic to facilitate the development of clinical reasoning skills. Real patients present small groups of students with the history of their illness. Using these patients and their stories, students learn how to apply acquired training and general medical knowledge to meet the clinical needs of an individual patient. Students write a summary report based on the outlined case.
Students learn:
 

• To learn to recognize their own weaknesses as a clinician, and to constantly ask themselves - "why?"
• To recognize the uniqueness and individuality of each patient, and realize that the “textbook patient,” does not exist.
• To identify the critical moments at which a physician in the patient’s story made a decisive medical decision, analyze and question these decisions.
• To be able to make health care decisions built on knowledge of evidence-based medicine.
• To critically analyze and give relevance to medical innovations and pertinent research developments.
• To learn to efficiently and effectively take a medical history and to differentiate between the more and less relevant information obtained.
• To be able to recognize indications for and interpret the results of additional diagnostic and laboratory testing.
• To develop demonstrable medical expertise

Course format and weekly schedule
Case study-based learning

The education stream clinical reasoning is small-scale. A single patient case is addressed by multiple study groups. Every semester the student autonomy, and the pace, complexity, and intensity of the sessions increases.

At the completion of year two the student can expect patient cases which have not explicitly been discussed during the written examination.

Attendance and participation is mandatory.


Place within the curriculum
The educational stream Clinical Reasoning continues throughout the entire curriculum, and is intertwined with the other three educational streams (Clinical Practice, Knowledge, and Scientific Research)

Literature
The block system is based on the following sources. 

• Textbooks utilized for the educational streams Knowledge, Scientific Knowlede, and Clinical Practice
• Summary reports found in ‘Studielandschap’
• Evidence based guidelines
• Medical journals

Please also refer to the general textbook list.

Assessment
Clinical Reasoning is tested, more information about the assessment can be found in the course manual.

Details pertaining to the conditions for participation in the final assessment are described in the guidebook Clinical Reasoning.


Contact: Dr. Bert Arets, e-mail: H.Arets@umcutrecht.nl