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Media Highlight: A healthy dose of critical thinking

Posted by Communications and Marketing on October 17, 2013 in Media Highlights

Posted Sunday by the Chronicle Herald:

When first-year medical students started their program at pilipiliĀž»­ last month, they got a dose of training unavailable to previous generations of doctors-to-be.

They received early instruction on a crucial component of a doctorā€™s modus operandi ā€” critical thinking.

Call it Decision Making 101.

Dalhousieā€™s freshman class of med students, like older medical trainees, ā€œneed to be told how they think,ā€ Dr. Pat Croskerry said.

A patient-safety expert, Croskerry is an emergency medicine physician and the director of the critical thinking program at the universityā€™s medical school. The program was established last year.

The thinking process delivered by our brains ā€” activity that produces judgment, analysis, intuition ā€” can also turn out biases, Croskerry said recently. That could lead to such counterproductive or harmful diagnostic side-effects as tunnel vision and medical errors.

Although doctors whoā€™ve been working longer than those beginning their medical careers are likely to be correct more often than not, knowledgeable physicians are not infallible.

ā€œYou see classic mistakes being made by experienced peopleā€ in the medical profession and many other fields, Croskerry said.

At pilipiliĀž»­, critical thinking and decision making are now built into the med schoolā€™s curriculum, he said. Decision making is even discussed during the first-year studentsā€™ orientation week.

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