The Relationship Between Self-Regulated Learning Competency and Clinical Reasoning Tendency in Medical Students

Self-regulated learning (SRL) is essential to professional learning and practice across disciplines. However, the literature provides limited insights into how medical educators could leverage the SRL framework to support trainees' strategic processes in clinical reasoning activities. In this study, we investigated the relationship between SRL competency and clinical reasoning tendency as 64 medical students diagnosed a virtual patient in a computer-simulated environment. We further examined whether students with different profiles of SRL competency and clinical reasoning tendency differed in their behavioral patterns and performance. The results suggested that SRL competency positively predicted clinical reasoning tendency. Enhancing medical students' SRL competency, especially their self-reflection skills, could increase the tendency toward relying on an analytic approach to clinical reasoning. Moreover, we identified two groups of students (i.e., analytic SRL learners, and non-analytic, low SRL learners) using K-means clustering analysis. The two groups of students differed in their behavioral patterns in clinical reasoning, as revealed by lag sequential analysis. Furthermore, analytic SRL learners ordered more relevant lab tests than non-analytic low SRL learners in clinical reasoning. This study has methodological and practical implications.