Medical education: Theories on clinical reasoning

Abstract

Formulating an appropriate diagnosis and plausible differential diagnoses is the hallmark of good clinical practice.  Clinical reasoning is defined as the cognitive process that leads to arrival of a diagnosis and formulation of the diagnostic plan. The process of clinical reasoning is discussed in the analytic, non-analytic and dual-process theories. The non-analytic process is experiential and intuitive, and is often triggered automatically. The analytic process is hypothetico-deductive, and kicks in where the scenario is unfamiliar or complex. Both the processes are at play in the dual-process theory of clinical reasoning, and this is often associated with a better diagnostic competence. Developers of medical education curricula will thus need to use heuristic techniques that trigger the duality of the process to facilitate clinical reasoning.