Building on experience--the development of clinical reasoning.

As medical students become physicians, they need to learn to diagnose and manage clinical problems — a process often referred to as developing clinical reasoning skills. Researchers have been exploring the nature of clinical diagnostic reasoning for more than three decades. The initial interest was sparked by a new generation of medical schools, such as those at McMaster University and Michigan State University, whose curricula were explicitly directed toward teaching and learning about “clinical problem-solving.” Little was known about the process, but the belief was that if it were better understood, we could teach it more effectively. In this issue . . .