gms | German Medical Science

Learning objective: Implementing clinical reasoning (CR) training into undergraduate medical curricula is on the agenda of many medical schools worldwide, and several approaches exist [1]. It is widely assumed that early clinical reasoning training can reduce diagnostic and therapeutic errors in the long term and equip students with cognitive skills they can employ as soon as they start working in the clinical context. Often, virtual patient scenarios, i. e. case-based online training scenarios, serve as a central part of undergraduate clinical reasoning training. Despite the wealth of evidence available on various aspects of teaching and learning clinical reasoning, it remains challenging to answer two critical questions:

1.

How should virtual patient scenarios be designed and optimised to support students’ development of clinical reasoning skills?

2.

How could online case-based clinical reasoning training be implemented best within an already existing curriculum?

This interactive workshop will provide practically applicable insights into what works and what does not by combining findings from the literature with the facilitators’ experiences, struggles and solutions in developing a longitudinal online CR training curriculum, and the translation of instructional CR methods to virtual patient scenarios.

After attending the workshop, the participants will be able to:

• Define clinical reasoning,
• Formulate learning objectives that can be addressed with case-based online CR training formats,
• Apply instructional methods suitable to specifically address different components of CR,
• Identify situations where online case-based CR training does not suffice,
• Choose suitable technological solutions for implementing CR training, and
• Develop an implementation strategy for their curriculum.

Course of the event with time schedule incl. didactic methods used: The workshop consists of a sequence of short inputs by the facilitators in combination with extensive practical (small group) tasks, followed by reflection and summary in the large group (see table 1 [Tab. 1]).

Target audience: This workshop is for educators, curriculum developers, and medical students who are curious about how to systematically design virtual patient scenarios to support medical students in clinical reasoning education.

Preparation: Reading the following article is helpful if Clinical Reasoning is a new topic for you, but it is not a prerequisite for attending the workshop: [2].