Clinical reasoning is a crucial ability for all practicing clinicians, yet explicit instruction in clinical reasoning is often lacking. Although teaching clinical reasoning poses challenges, this cluster of skills can and should be developed to ensure safe patient outcomes. In this webinar, clinical reasoning expert Dr. Raja-Elie Abdulnour guides educators through the cognitive processes and models that learners experience as they progress through the stages of clinical reasoning. When teaching clinical reasoning, educators must provide the right amount of data at the right time to avoid cognitive overload, and to do this they must recognize the learners’ stage to provide the appropriate guidance. Dr. Abdulnour shows educators teaching future clinicians the discrete steps of clinical reasoning, including explanations of key concepts and terminology in the clinical reasoning process.

When equipped with evidence-based strategies and planning guidance, learners do best in high-stakes exams. In our latest webinar, our guest speaker Louise Jones PhD, director of the Graduate Medical Education (GME) Research and Quality Improvement program at Northeast Georgia Medical Center (NGMC), empowered educators with the tools needed to guide students through licensure exams with confidence, including MCAT®, USMLE®, Subject Exams, COMLEX, PANCE® and many more.

Understanding Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) is key to maximizing learning in your students. CLT is based on the premise that the brain has a limited working memory capacity. In the final edition of our Start Smart series, Dr. Adonis Wazir will highlight key elements of the theory and provide recommendations for enhancing instruction, as well as tips on how you can reduce extraneous load and manage intrinsic load in your learners.

In this webinar, Dr. Adonis Wazir took attendees through key information about instructional design, assessments, and showed how they can manage their time effectively at the start of the semester. Faculty members received guidance on instructional design models and practical tips, from setting clear learning objectives to determining assessment strategies in the classroom.

Differential diagnosis, the systematic process of considering various possible medical conditions that could explain a patient’s symptoms of clinical findings, is essential for healthcare professionals to diagnose and treat patients accurately. In this webinar, Dr. Stephen Holt, Associate Professor of Medicine at Yale University, helped educators break down the process of teaching clinical reasoning, focusing on teaching future clinicians to formulate a differential diagnosis.