Clinical Reasoning Needs to Be Explicitly Addressed in Health Professions Curricula: Recommendations from a European Consortium
Open accessAbstract
Clinical reasoning entails the application of knowledge and skills to collect and integrate information, typically with the goal of arriving at a diagnosis and management plan based on the patient’s unique circumstances and preferences. Evidence-informed, structured, and explicit teaching and assessment of clinical reasoning in educational programs of medical and other health professions remain unmet needs. We herein summarize recommendations for clinical reasoning learning objectives (LOs), as derived from a consensus approach among European and US researchers and health professions educators. A four-step consensus approach was followed: (1) identification of a convenience sample of the most relevant and applied national LO catalogues for health professions educational programs (N = 9) from European and US countries, (2) extraction of LOs related to clinical reasoning and translation into English, (3) mapping of LOs into predefined categories developed within the Erasmus+ Developing, implementing, and disseminating an adaptive clinical reasoning curriculum for healthcare students and educators (DID-ACT) consortium, and (4) synthesis of analysis findings into recommendations for how LOs related to clinical reasoning could be presented and incorporated in LO catalogues, upon consensus. Three distinct recommendations were formulated: (1) make clinical reasoning explicit, (2) emphasize interprofessional and collaboration aspects of clinical reasoning, and (3) include aspects of teaching and assessment of clinical reasoning. In addition, the consortium understood that implementation of bilingual catalogues with English as a common language might contribute to lower heterogeneity regarding amount, structure, and level of granularity of clinical reasoning LOs across countries. These recommendations will hopefully motivate and guide initiatives towards the implementation of LOs related to clinical reasoning in existing and future LO catalogues.
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An insufficient level of clinical reasoning ability is a primary cause of cognitive errors in patient care and poses threats to patient safety, such as unnecessary pain, treatments, or procedures, and increased healthcare costs.
“An insufficient level of clinical reasoning ability is identified as a primary cause of cognitive errors in patient care and poses threats to patient safety, such as unnecessary pain, treatments, or procedures, as well as increased healthcare costs [9, 10].”
From Turkish adaptation of the clinical reasoning evaluation simulation tool (CREST-TR): a validity and reliability study (2025) · cites this paper as [9]
The Introduction (page not provided) says inadequate clinical reasoning threatens patient safety and may lead to inappropriate treatment or procedures and suboptimal use of societal resources. Results §3.5 (page not provided) addresses cognitive errors in clinical reasoning, but the paper does not identify insufficient ability as a primary cause of those errors or specifically mention unnecessary pain or increased healthcare costs. (LLM, conf=0.85)
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Olson, A., Rencic, J., Cosby, K., Rusz, D., Papa, F., Croskerry, P., Zierler, B., Harkless, G., Giuliano, M. A., Schoenbaum, S., et al. (2019) · Diagnosis · doi:10.1515/dx-2018-0107 · Cited by 101 · see citing works
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Research works printed but not linked: 12
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Borg, A., Georg, C., Jobs, B., Huss, V., Waldenlind, K., Ruiz, M., Edelbring, S., Skantze, G., & Parodis, I. (2025) · Journal of Medical Internet Research · doi:10.2196/63312 · Cited by 51 · see citing works
Self-citationBayzat, C., & Dinc, L. (2025) · BMC Nursing · doi:10.1186/s12912-025-03503-0 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
- Authors
- Parodis, I., Andersson, L., Durning, S. J., Hege, I., Knez, J., Kononowicz, A. A., Lidskog, M., Petreski, T., Szopa, M., & Edelbring, S.
- Affiliations
- Karolinska University Hospital (SE)
- Örebro University (SE)
- Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (US)
- University of Augsburg (DE)
- University of Maribor (SI)
- Jagiellonian University (PL)
- Corresponding author
- Parodis, Ioannis
- ORCID
- Venue
- International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2021-10-25
- Volume
- 18
- Issue
- 21
- Pages
- 11202
- ISSN
- 1660-4601 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC8583438
- OpenAlex
- W3208423523
- Cited by
- 40
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 2
- FWCI
- 5.91
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Jagiellonian University Repository (Jagiellonian University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- OPUS (Augsburg University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- European Union (612454-EPP-1-2019-1-DE-EPPKA2-KA)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Family Practice › Clinical Reasoning and Diagnostic Skills
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Innovations in Medical Education
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health Sciences Research and Education
- Keywords
- clinical reasoning, learning objectives, health professions education, curriculum development, interprofessional collaboration, clinical reasoning assessment, medical education, consensus recommendations
- MeSH terms
- Clinical Reasoning, Clinical Competence, Curriculum, Health Occupations, Humans, Learning, Knowledge
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