When less is more for the struggling clinical reasoner

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Clinical Reasoning
• Medical Training

Background:

• Medical students often require remediation for clinical reasoning deficits.
• Educators face time constraints in providing effective feedback.
• Current remediation strategies may not be optimal for all learners.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe an early experience with a novel remediation approach for medical students with clinical reasoning deficits.
• To propose a streamlined feedback method for busy clinician-educators.
• To evaluate the feasibility of providing less feedback and more practice.

Main Methods:

• Focusing feedback on problem representation and prioritized differential diagnosis during oral presentations.
• Implementing repeated, real-time feedback loops until competency is achieved.
• Utilizing deliberate practice to enhance skill development.

Main Results:

• The proposed approach allows for targeted feedback on assessment and differential diagnosis.
• Struggling students demonstrated concrete improvement through this method.
• The remediation strategy is feasible for busy educators during short-term assignments.

Conclusions:

• Streamlining feedback to focus on core components of clinical reasoning is effective.
• Deliberate practice enhances competency development in struggling medical students.
• This remediation approach offers a practical solution for clinician-educators and warrants further investigation.