A web tool (TICTT) to support reasoning in the health professions

Abstract

Medicine and nursing are highly complex professions operating within a rapidly changing health care environment. Teaching physicians and nurses to think analytically and reflectively and use knowledge and skills to provide safe and effective care is essential to the future of both professions. Considerable research has been undertaken to elucidate the skills that underpin clinical reasoning in nursing and medicine since they are critical to professional practice. Since many medical graduates, Australian and international, show one or more deficiencies in their capacity for clinical reasoning (Neame, 1984), developing the capacity for clinical reasoning in medical and nursing curricula is of great importance. This paper describes the development of TICTT (The Critical Thinking Tool), an Internet tool to aid development of students' clinical reasoning skills in case-based or problem-based curricula.