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INTRODUCTION: Previous research suggests that, relative to generating a differential diagnosis, deliberate reflection during practice with clinical cases fosters learning from a subsequently studied scientific text and promotes interest in the subject matter. The present experiment aimed to replicate these findings and to examine whether motivational or cognitive mechanisms, or both, underlie the positive effects of reflection. METHODS: A total of 101 5th-year medical students participated in an experiment containing four phases: Students (a) diagnosed two clinical cases of jaundice-related diseases either through deliberate reflection or differential diagnosis; (b) reported their situational interest and awareness of knowledge gaps; (c) studied a text about jaundice, either under free or restricted time; and (d) recalled the text. Outcome measures were text-recall, situational interest and awareness of knowledge gaps. RESULTS: A main effect of diagnostic approach on recall of the text was found, with the reflection group recalling more studied material than the differential diagnosis group (means: 72.56 vs 58.80; P = .01). No interaction between diagnostic approach and study time (free or restricted) emerged, nor was there a main effect of the latter. Relative to the differential diagnosis group, students who reflected upon the cases scored significantly higher on both situational interest (means: 4.45 vs 3.99, P < .001) and awareness of knowledge gaps (means: 4.13 vs 3.85, P < .01). DISCUSSION: Relative to generating differential diagnoses, reflection upon clinical cases increased learning outcomes on a subsequent study task, an effect that was independent of study time, suggesting that cognitive mechanisms underlie this effect, rather than increases in motivation to study. However, higher scores on situational interest and awareness of knowledge gaps and a tendency towards larger gains when time was free suggest that higher motivation may also contribute to learning from reflection.
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Educação de Graduação em Medicina , Estudantes de Medicina , Competência Clínica , Diagnóstico Diferencial , Humanos , MotivaçãoRESUMO
BACKGROUND: Deliberate reflection on initial diagnoses improved diagnostic accuracy in internal medicine and general practice, but it is unknown if the same occurs in specialties that rely mostly on visual perception, such as dermatology. Moreover, whether reflection influences diagnostic calibration has not been studied yet. Diagnostic calibration, the relationship between diagnostic accuracy and confidence in that accuracy, affects diagnostic performance because overconfidence tends to induce premature closure. This study evaluated the effects of deliberate reflection on diagnostic accuracy and diagnostic calibration in dermatology. METHODS: Sixty-one sixth-year students from a Brazilian medical school were allocated to either a reflection group (RG) or a control group (CG). In both groups, students worked with the same 12 dermatological images, presented sequentially, providing an initial diagnosis and confidence in that diagnosis. Subsequently, RG students reflected on the case using a structured procedure, while CG students performed a time-filler activity. All students then provided a final diagnosis and confidence in that diagnosis. Outcome measurements were diagnostic accuracy, confidence, and calibration. RESULTS: Reflection increased diagnostic accuracy relative to control (49.7⯱ 12.1 vs 38.4⯱ 14.6; pâ¯= 0.002) but did not affect confidence (64.3⯱ 13.2 vs 58.9⯱ 20.1; pâ¯=â¯0.228) nor calibration (0.15⯱ 0.16 vs 0.20⯱ 0.19, pâ¯=â¯0.197). Overall, case difficulty influenced calibration, with students showing more overconfidence on more difficult cases (pâ¯<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Deliberate reflection increased diagnostic accuracy in dermatology but did not affect confidence and calibration. Calibration was worse on more difficult cases, suggesting that calibration is a knowledge-related phenomenon.
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Dermatologia/métodos , Erros de Diagnóstico/prevenção & controle , Técnicas e Procedimentos Diagnósticos , Dermatopatias/diagnóstico , Pensamento , Adulto , Brasil , Competência Clínica , Diagnóstico Diferencial , Educação de Graduação em Medicina/métodos , Feminino , Humanos , MasculinoRESUMO
CONTEXT: Reflection in practice is assumed to enhance interest in knowing more about a topic, increasing engagement in learning and learning outcomes. However, this claim lacks empirical evidence, particularly in medical education. The authors investigated the effects of deliberate reflection upon clinical cases on medical students' engagement in a learning activity and learning outcomes. METHODS: A three-task (diagnostic task; learning activity; test) experiment was conducted in August 2017. Seventy-two fourth-year students from UNIFENAS-BH Medical School, Brazil, diagnosed two clinical cases with jaundice as the chief complaint, either by following a deliberate reflection procedure or making differential diagnosis. Subsequently, all participants received the same study material on the diagnosis of jaundice. Finally, they took a recall test on the study material. Outcome measurements were study time and test scores. RESULTS: There was a significant effect of experimental condition on students' engagement in the learning activity and on learning outcomes. Students who deliberately reflected upon the cases invested more time in studying the material than those who made a differential diagnosis (respectively, mean = 254.97, standard deviation = 115.45 versus mean = 194.96, standard deviation = 111.68; p = 0.02; d = 0.53). Deliberate reflection was also related to higher scores in the test relative to differential diagnosis (respectively, mean = 22.08, standard deviation = 14.94 versus mean = 15.75, standard deviation = 9.24; p = 0.03; d = 0.51). Medium effect sizes (Cohen's d) were observed in both measurements. CONCLUSIONS: Relative to making differential diagnosis, deliberate reflection while diagnosing cases fostered medical students' engagement in learning and increased learning outcomes. Teachers can employ this relatively easy procedure, possibly both with simulated and real scenarios, to motivate their students and help them expand their knowledge, an important requirement for their professional development.
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Competência Clínica/normas , Avaliação Educacional , Aprendizagem , Estudantes de Medicina/psicologia , Pensamento , Adulto , Brasil , Diagnóstico Diferencial , Educação de Graduação em Medicina/métodos , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Motivação , Adulto JovemRESUMO
CONTEXT: Reflection has been considered crucial to learning. Engaging in reflection while solving problems is expected to foster identification of knowledge gaps and interest in learning more about them, the latter being a major motivational force in learning. Although theoretically sound, this assumption still lacks empirical evidence. This experiment investigated whether reflection while diagnosing clinical cases of different levels of difficulty influences medical students' awareness of knowledge gaps and situational interest. METHODS: Forty-two fourth-year students from a Brazilian medical school were randomly allocated to diagnose six clinical cases (three difficult; three easy), either by following a structured reflection procedure (reflection group) or by giving alternative diagnoses (control group). Subsequently, for each case, all students rated their situational interest and awareness of knowledge gaps. RESULTS: Situational interest was significantly higher in the reflection group than in the control group (mean = 4.10, standard deviation = 0.50 versus mean = 3.65, standard deviation = 0.48, respectively; p = 0.003; range, 1-5). The effect size was large (d = 0.92). Awareness of knowledge gaps was higher in the reflection group than in the control group, but the difference was not significant. Case difficulty influenced both situational interest, which was significantly higher on easy than on difficult cases (mean = 3.96, standard deviation = 0.56 versus mean = 3.80, standard deviation = 0.55, respectively; p = 0.004), and awareness of knowledge gaps, with higher scores observed on difficult compared with easy cases (mean = 3.99, standard deviation = 0.46 versus mean = 3.66, standard deviation = 0.53, respectively; p < .001). No interaction between experimental condition and case difficulty emerged. CONCLUSION: Relative to providing alternative diagnoses while solving cases, structured reflection increased medical students' interest and may therefore be a useful tool for teachers concerned with enhancing students' motivation for learning. Surprisingly, easy cases promoted higher situational interest despite the higher awareness of knowledge gaps on difficult cases. This suggests the potential for case difficulty to inhibit students' interest in learning, a possibility that demands further investigation.
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Conscientização , Motivação , Resolução de Problemas , Estudantes de Medicina/psicologia , Adulto , Brasil , Educação de Graduação em Medicina/métodos , Feminino , Humanos , Aprendizagem , Masculino , Adulto JovemRESUMO
Self-explanation while diagnosing clinical cases fosters medical students' diagnostic performance. In previous studies on self-explanation, students were free to self-explain any aspect of the case, and mostly clinical knowledge was used. Elaboration on knowledge of pathophysiological mechanisms of diseases has been largely unexplored in studies of strategies for teaching clinical reasoning. The purpose of this two-phase experiment was to investigate the effect of self-explanation of pathophysiology during practice with clinical cases on students' diagnostic performance. In the training phase, 39 4th-year medical students were randomly assigned to solve 6 criterion cases (3 of jaundice; 3 of chest pain), either self-explaining the pathophysiological mechanisms of the findings (n = 20) or without self-explaining (n = 19). One-week later, in the assessment phase, all students solved 6 new cases of the same syndromes. A repeated-measures analysis of variance on the mean diagnostic accuracy scores showed no significant main effects of study phase (p = 0.34) and experimental condition (p = 0.10) and no interaction effect (p = 0.42). A post hoc analysis found a significant interaction (p = 0.022) between study phase and syndrome type. Despite equal familiarity with jaundice and chest pain, the performance of the self-explanation group (but not of the non-self-explanation group) on jaundice cases significantly improved between training and assessment phases (p = 0.035) whereas no differences between phases emerged on chest pain cases. Self-explanation of pathophysiology did not improve students' diagnostic performance for all diseases. Apparently, the positive effect of this form of self-explanation on performance depends on the studied diseases sharing similar pathophysiological mechanisms, such as in the jaundice cases.
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Competência Clínica , Diagnóstico , Estudantes de Medicina/psicologia , Dor no Peito/diagnóstico , Dor no Peito/fisiopatologia , Compreensão , Doença , Educação Médica/métodos , Feminino , Humanos , Icterícia/diagnóstico , Icterícia/fisiopatologia , Masculino , Autoavaliação (Psicologia) , Adulto JovemRESUMO
PURPOSE: To develop diagnostic competence, students should practice with many examples of clinical problems to build rich mental representations of diseases. How to enhance learning from practice remains unknown. This study investigated the effects of reflection on cases compared with generating a single or differential diagnosis. METHOD: In 2012, during the learning phase, 110 fourth-year medical students diagnosed four cases of two criterion diseases under three different experimental conditions: structured reflection, single-diagnosis, or differential-diagnosis. One week later, they diagnosed two novel exemplars of each criterion disease and four cases of new diseases that were not among the cases of the learning phase but were plausible alternative diagnoses. RESULTS: Diagnostic performance did not differ among the groups in the learning phase. One week later, the reflection group obtained higher mean diagnostic accuracy scores (range: 0-1) than the other groups when diagnosing new exemplars of criterion diseases (reflection: 0.67; single-diagnosis: 0.36, P < .001; differential-diagnosis: 0.51, P = .014) and cases of new diseases (reflection: 0.44; single-diagnosis: 0.32, P = .010; differential-diagnosis: 0.33, P = .015). No difference was found between the single-diagnosis and the differential-diagnosis conditions. CONCLUSIONS: Structured reflection while practicing with cases enhanced learning of diagnosis both of the diseases practiced and of their alternative diagnoses, suggesting that reflection not only enriched mental representations of diseases practiced relative to more conventional approaches to clinical learning but also influenced the representations of adjacent but different diseases. Structured reflection seems a useful addition to the existing clinical teaching methods.
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Competência Clínica , Técnicas e Procedimentos Diagnósticos , Educação de Graduação em Medicina/métodos , Adulto , Brasil , Diagnóstico Diferencial , Avaliação Educacional , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Aprendizagem Baseada em ProblemasRESUMO
CONTEXT: Reflective practice has been suggested to be an important instrument in improving clinical judgement and developing medical expertise. Empirical evidence supporting this suggestion, however, is absent. This paper reports on an experiment conducted to study the effects of reflective practice on diagnostic accuracy. METHODS: Participants were 42 internal medicine residents in hospitals in 2 states in the northeast of Brazil. They diagnosed 16 clinical cases. The experiment employed a repeated measures design, with 2 independent variables: the complexity of clinical cases (simple or complex), and the reasoning approach induced to diagnose the case (participants were instructed to diagnose each case either through pattern recognition or reflective reasoning). The dependent variable was the accuracy of the diagnosis provided for each case. All participants participated in each of the 2 levels of both independent variables. RESULTS: A main effect of case complexity emerged. There was no statistically significant main effect of reflective practice. However, a significant interaction effect was found between case complexity and mode of processing (F[1,41] = 4.48, P < 0.05), indicating that although reflective practice did not make a difference to accuracy of diagnosis in simple cases, it had a positive effect when diagnosing complex cases. CONCLUSIONS: Reflective practice had a positive effect on diagnosis of complex, unusual cases. Non-analytical reasoning was shown to be as effective as reflective reasoning for diagnosing routine clinical cases. Findings support the idea that reflective practice may particularly improve diagnoses in situations of uncertainty and uniqueness, reducing diagnostic errors.
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Competência Clínica/normas , Diagnóstico , Medicina Interna/educação , Internato e Residência , Brasil , PensamentoRESUMO
PURPOSE: While diagnosing problems, physicians frequently switch from nonanalytical to reflective reasoning. The conditions inducing doctors to reflect are largely unknown. The authors investigated whether a shift to reflection occurs when physicians perceive a case as problematic, and its effects on diagnostic accuracy. METHOD: The authors conducted two within-subjects experiments in Brazilian teaching hospitals in 2007. In Experiment 1, 20 medical residents diagnosed the same 10 clinical cases under two experimental conditions: a nonproblematic versus a problematic context. (The latter was created by informing participants that other physicians failed to diagnose the case previously.) In addition, participants judged whether a set of medical concepts were related to the case, and response time was measured. In Experiment 2, 18 residents diagnosed two cases while thinking aloud. The authors hypothesized that a case perceived as problematic would trigger reflection, leading to higher diagnostic accuracy, lower response times for recognizing concepts (Experiment 1), more time for diagnosing, and more elaborate think-aloud protocols (Experiment 2). RESULTS: Experiment 1: Accuracy of diagnosis was significantly higher within the problematic context, and participants were faster in deciding whether concepts were related to the case. The same cases were evaluated as more complex and less frequently seen. Experiment 2: Time spent on diagnosis, memory for case findings, and inferences derived from the cases were significantly higher within the problematic context. CONCLUSIONS: A context perceived as problematic induced reflection in the participating clinicians, as indicated by lower response times, more time spent on diagnosis, and more elaborate protocols. Reflective reasoning comprised more careful analysis of findings and alternative diagnoses, and increased diagnostic accuracy.
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Competência Clínica , Diagnóstico Diferencial , Internato e Residência , Percepção Social , Pensamento , Adulto , Análise de Variância , Brasil , Competência Clínica/estatística & dados numéricos , Sistemas de Apoio a Decisões Clínicas , Feminino , Hospitais de Ensino/estatística & dados numéricos , Humanos , Internato e Residência/estatística & dados numéricos , MasculinoRESUMO
CONTEXT: Two modes of case processing have been shown to underlie diagnostic judgements: analytical and non-analytical reasoning. An optimal form of clinical reasoning is suggested to combine both modes. Conditions leading doctors to shift from the usual mode of non-analytical reasoning to reflective reasoning have not been identified. This paper reports a study aimed at exploring these conditions by investigating the effects of ambiguity of clinical cases on clinical reasoning. METHODS: Participants were 16 internal medicine residents in the Brazilian state of Ceará. They were asked to diagnose 20 clinical cases and recall case information. The independent variable was the degree of ambiguity of clinical cases, with 2 levels: straightforward (i.e. non-ambiguous) and ambiguous. Dependent variables were processing time, diagnostic accuracy and proposition per category recalled. Data were analysed using a repeated measures design. RESULTS: Participants processed straightforward cases faster and more accurately than ambiguous ones. The proportion of text propositions recalled was significantly lower (t[15] = 2.29, P = 0.037) in ambiguous cases, and an interaction effect between case version and proposition category was also found (F[5, 75] = 4.52, P = 0.001, d = 0.232, observed power = 0.962). Furthermore, participants recalled significantly more literal propositions from the ambiguous cases than from the straightforward cases (t[15] = 2.28, P = 0.037). CONCLUSIONS: Ambiguity of clinical cases was shown to lead residents to switch from automatic to reflective reasoning, as indicated by longer processing time, and more literal propositions recalled in ambiguous cases.