Teaching of Clinical Reasoning Guided by Illness Script Theory

Abstract Background Teaching of clinical reasoning (CR) can be facilitated by educational strategies guided by illness script theory. Objective To evaluate the effects of an educational strategy guided by illness script theory on the diagnostic accuracy of chest pain in medical students. Methods Experimental study in 3 phases, with 18 third-year medical students completing phase 3. Phases 1 and 2 had 27 students. In phase 1, each participant solved 8 clinical cases (6 of chest pain and 2 distractors). In phase 2, participants were divided into 2 groups, which distinctly trained 3 of the chest pain diagnoses from phase 1. In phase 3, after 1 week, each participant solved 8 new cases, with the same diagnoses as phase 1. Case resolution time and diagnostic accuracy were evaluated. The significance level adopted for statistical analysis was p