Developing Clinical Reasoning in a Physician Assistant Curriculum: The University of Sheffield approach.

Abstract

Clinical reasoning remains a key area for development amongst clinical students across the world. Physician assistant (PA) roles (physician associate in the United Kingdom) are rapidly expanding, and there is a need to ensure that this core skill is reflected in course curricula. This article presents how the University of Sheffield has integrated clinical reasoning into the curriculum for its PA course. This includes recognizing the need to consider different approaches to reasoning and how they are taught, the assessment of reasoning across Miller's pyramid, and other considerations that contribute to embedding reasoning within the course. We discuss the implications of our approach and comment on issues that we may need to consider in the future.