Teaching and learning clinical reasoning: a teacher's toolbox to meet different learning needs

Abstract

Clinical reasoning is an essential part of medical practice and therefore should be an important part of clinical teaching. However, it has been and is still a challenge for clinical teachers to support learners in the development of their clinical reasoning skills. As learners progress in clerkship, so do their learning needs. As a result, teachers need multiple tools to foster the development of clinical reasoning and should know when and why to use them. This article presents tools gathered as part of a clinical teacher's toolbox aimed at coaching learners towards the next step in their clinical reasoning development as well as helping teachers diagnose clinical reasoning difficulties and meet the diverse learning needs of their learners. The article focuses on three tools that were developed by faculty at the University of Sherbrooke Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences: the iSNAPPS-OMP Technique, the Anticipatory Supervision Technique and the Clinical Sudoku or table of discriminating clues. This article uses the term ‘tools’ as a generic expression to signify ‘items in a toolbox’. It includes all kinds of resources (techniques, strategies, models) that were gathered to help clinical teachers with the teaching of clinical reasoning.