Programs

Medical School Education

Medical Student Clinical Reasoning Education

Trainees begin developing their clinical reasoning during medical school. Faculty of the Clinical Center for Medical Decision Making begin teaching the common language and core principles of clinical reasoning to students as early as their preclinical years. Students learn about key findings, illness scripts, and problem representation through workshops embedded in their systems blocks.

Clinical reasoning instruction continues during the clerkship phase in the Internal Medicine Clerkship. During this rotation, all students at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine complete the Diagnostic Error and Medical Decision Making online, interactive modules. The course was developed by faculty from the Center to teach clinical reasoning principles and practice to students and residents.

Medicine Clerkship students also meet every day with their assigned Student Teaching Attending. During these small group, interactive sessions, students present and discuss patient cases from their ward rotations with the guidance of specially selected teaching faculty from the Division of General Internal Medicine. Faculty lead students’ discussion of these cases with a focus on using diagnostic frameworks and honing illness scripts to guide the development of a differential diagnosis and diagnostic/therapeutic plan.

During the 4th year of medical school, Pitt students may elect to take the Advanced Clinical Reasoning course. This 4 week course reinforces the core reasoning concepts taught earlier in medical school while delving more deeply into the cognitive and educational psychology of reasoning. Students learn skills that will help them continue to develop their reasoning later in their training careers, regardless of their chosen specialty.