Medicine is a sense of proportion!
“…Whoever saves a life; saves all of the
humankind….”
Sound Clinical Reasoning Saves lives!
Clinical Medicine is an imprecise science with biological variations and diverse responses to illnesses and treatments. No diagnostic test is 100% perfect. Clinical practice is complex, and decisions are made in the context of uncertainty. The medical profession remains an art, with different clinicians having varying levels of skill and understanding (1). Clinical reasoning represents the central component of professional competence and is relevant to all disciplines of healthcare.
Meaningful learning is the key to develop medical expertise. It involves understanding how all pieces of the entire clinical puzzle fit together. Meaningful learning is an active, integrative, and inquiry-based process (2). It is a mix of active study and action-learning with reflection on experience. It enables medical trainees and clinicians to memorize the founding knowledge (i.e., illness script) in the clinical context and utilize management algorithm (i.e., reasoning script) to solve clinical problems.
Pearls of Wisdom
“We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience.” ―John Dewy
“Education is not the learning of facts; it is the training of the mind to think.” ―Albert Einstein
“Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.” ― William Osler