Teaching your Learners Clinical Reasoning and how to Avoid Common Diagnostic Errors

Nadia L. Bennett, MD

University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine, PA 19104, USA

Medical diagnosisis a cornerstone of general internal medicine. In order to accurately diagnose a condition and help refine a differential diagnosis, physicians and health care providers routinely use mental heuristics and clinical reasoning cues. Several factors can limit a provider’s ability to accurately diagnose a condition or reason through a diagnosis systematically. This is especially true for less experienced providers and physicians in training. It is therefore importantfor health care providers to understand basic principles of clinical reasoning and develop tools to teach their learners how to avoid common diagnostic errors.

In this session, we will discuss medical heuristics, basic principles and diagnostic theory that serve as a foundation for clinical reasoning. We will then provide the participants with practical tools and a stepwise approach that will enable them to teach their learners how to avoid common diagnostic errors.

The objectives of the session are to:

  • Review the key models used to conceptualize clinical reasoning
  • Understand the major cognitive biases and how they can contribute to diagnostic error
  • Utilize a framework to identify learners with clinical reasoning deficits
  • Discuss strategies to help learners with clinical reasoning deficits

Biography

Nadia Bennett completed her BA at Johns Hopkins University in 2002 and her MD at the University of Maryland in 2007. She completed her internal medicine resdidency at Duke University Hospital in 2010. She is currently an assistant professor of medicine and hosptialist at the Hospital of the Unversity of Pennsylvania. She also serves as the co-director for the internal medicine clerkship and a director for a Clinical Skills course for MD/PhD students at Penn. She specializes in medical education and curriculum design. She has given several lectures on clinical reasoning to medical students, residents and faculty.

Presenting author details
Full name: Nadia Bennett
Contact number: (215) 662-3797

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Category: Oral presentation or plenary speech or workshop