Review of research on clinical reasoning theory

Clinical reasoning is the central component of physician′s competence.Research on clinical reasoning has been conducted for almost 40 years.In this paper, the history and the current trend of clinical reasoning research will be reviewed.The field begins with the strategy of reasoning, then focuses on a critical examination of expert′s memory and knowledge representation. In this period, many theories were presented to help people understand the nature of clinical reasoning.Nowadays, the dual-process model is supported by many researchers.Within this model, researchers tried to explore reasoning strategies to reduce diagnostic error, however, the results were far from satisfactory.Shifting reasoning strategies to memory or knowledge representation may be a new horizon for this field. Key words: Clinical reasoning; Knowledge representation; Dual-process model; Diagnostic errors