The Effect of Curricular Phase on the Clinical Reasoning Skills of Medical Students at the University of Nottingham

This article was migrated. The article was not marked as recommended. IntroductionThere are many factors affecting the development of clinical reasoning (CR) skills. It has been suggested that the stage of undergraduate study of the student can affect their level of CR. The marks of CR questions in the summative exams of students studying medicine at the University of Nottingham (UoN) at different curricular phase were used to ascertain further insight into the theory.MethodAnalysis was conducted to determine whether there are significant differences in outcomes of CR scores within the summative written exam across the three categories of the independent variables of school year (2011-2012, 2012-2013 and 2013-2014) for Clinical Phase (CP) 1; (2013-2014, 2014-2015 and 2015-2016) for CP3.Results As a summary, the CR scores of summative written exams of students were significantly higher in the CP3 dataset than in the CP1 dataset for 3 cohorts.ConclusionThe CR scores from the summative written exams of students from all 3 different periods were significantly higher in the CP3 dataset than in the CP1 dataset. Therefore, the curricular phase and the exposure to clinical practices have an impact on the development of CR.