BACKGROUND
Teaching critical thinking is one of the main requirements for a successful career in the medical profession. Given that healthcare is an uncertain domain and prone to diagnostic and management errors, improving critical thinking abilities of physicians could be an influential factor in medical routine practice, such as choosing treatment plans, making an accurate diagnosis and reducing the medical errors.
OBJECTIVE
The aim of the study was to evaluate the effects of holding a longitudinal critical thinking course on medical students’ skills.
METHODS
A longitudinal descriptive design was used with a convenience sample of 103 students; 91 students participated two times in completing a questionnaire each March from 2013 to 2016. The valid response rate was 88%. Students were asked to complete the California Critical Thinking Skills Test in the week before their first educational session. Posttest data were collected 6 to 8 weeks after the program.
RESULTS
Ninety-one medical students with the mean age of 20±2.8 years participated in this study. Forty-three of them were male (%47.3). The highest change in both pre and post-test scores was for the analysis part. We have a positive difference in all the subscales but the difference is not significantly meaningful for the inference and deductive part (P-value= 0.28 and 0.42). We found no significant difference between the scores of male and female (P=0.77).
CONCLUSIONS
The study indicated that teaching clinical thinking to undergraduate medical students could improve their critical thinking skills. Students performed the best in the analysis, inductive reasoning, and evaluation skills and their weakest skill was inference and deductive.