Teaching clinical decision making

Clinical judgment has traditionally been left to be acquired chiefly through personal experience and conversations with experienced practitioners. Given the explosion of knowledge and technology of recent years, a more systematic approach to managing information has become increasingly important. Ethical issues, both of a social and more individual nature, also increasingly demand attention. This paper describes one effort to address these problems through medical education. A three quarter pre-clinical course was revised to incorporate decision analysis and ethical analysis. The approach, results and problems of the two-year-old innovation are discussed, and general recommendations are offered.