HOW TO GET INTO CLINICAL REASONING IN EIGHT STEPS

Nancy E. Fernández-Garza* and Diana Patricia Montemayor-Flores. Medicine School, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Monterrey Nuevo León, MEXICO.

PURPOSE: Clinical Reasoning is the key competency of medical practice. Through this complex intellectual ability, patient’s information is integrated with physician’s knowledge and experience in order to get a diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, prognosis and prevention of patients. The question is: What is the better way to develop this competency in preclinical students?

METHODS: We looked out for the intellectual abilities that lead to Clinical Reasoning and the shortest path to reach it.

RESULTS: What we found is that if clinical information is studied using the basic intellectual abilities: identification, description, comparison, definition and classification, and with the result of this starts a continues and repetitive intellectual play that goes from analysis to synthesis and evaluation we are learning Clinical Reasoning. Based on this, we wrote a booklet in which we describe how by applying this intellectual path to solve clinical problems students start to learn Clinical Reasoning.

CONCLUSION: The systematic use of this intellectual path allows students start learning Clinical Reasoning in the right way, avoiding learning the hard way what is expensive in time and effort.