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Teaching Clinical Reasoning: An Experiment Comparing The Effects Of Small-Group Hypothetico-Deduction Versus Self-Explanation, Ahmed Al Rumayyan, Silvia Mamede, Walther N.K.A. Van Mook, Henk G. Schmidt

Health Professions Education

Introduction. Research on the effectiveness of approaches for the teaching of clinical reasoning is scarce. A recent study showed hypothetico-deduction to be slightly more beneficial than self-explanation for students’ diagnostic performance. An account for this difference was unclear. This study investigated whether hypothetico-deduction leads to consideration of more alternative diagnoses while practicing with cases, and whether its advantage over self-explanation remains when diseases slightly different from the ones previously studied are tested.

Methods. One-hundred thirty-nine 2^nd-year students from a six-year medical school participated in a two-phase experiment. In the learning phase, they worked in small groups on …