A scoping review of inquiry in medicine and nursing using Dewey's perspective

Health professions educators widely agree that inquiry must be fostered in trainees, yet fundamental questions remain about how to cultivate it as a habit. This scoping review examined instructional approaches to teaching inquiry in medicine and nursing through the lens of John Dewey's philosophical framework, which conceptualizes inquiry as comprising both a five-phase method and a psychological attitude toward inquiry methods. Our analysis of 103 articles describing inquiry-focused educational interventions in medical and nursing education shows that, beyond clinical reasoning and evidence-based practice, current approaches predominantly emphasize research participation, focusing on building knowledge and skills in inquiry methods while largely neglecting two critical components of Deweyan inquiry. First, interventions rarely engage learners in the initial phase of recognizing and experiencing uncertainty-the crucial starting point that drives authentic inquiry. Second, despite well-established links between attitudes and behavior, promoting positive attitudes toward inquiry methods was rarely an explicit educational objective. We conclude that teaching inquiry purely as a method, without attending to the formative experiences of uncertainty and attitude development, falls short of cultivating inquiry as a sustained professional habit. Future educational interventions can be strengthened by explicitly designing for awareness of uncertainty, including clear attitudinal objectives, and measuring not only the skills acquired but also the attitude formed toward inquiry methods.