Implementing Clinical Scenarios in an Undergraduate Physiology Course to Enhance Critical Thinking Across Multiple Body Systems

Abstract

Many medical schools have adopted a clinical problem‐based learning approach for 1st year students. It is essential that undergraduate institutions prepare pre‐health students for this shifting trend in medical education. Undergraduates at OSU are rarely required to apply their knowledge of physiology in the context of a patient exhibiting symptoms involving interplay between multiple body systems. Therefore, the objective of this project was to measure student performance in a senior level physiology course on critical thinking questions covering clinical scenarios involving concepts across multiple body systems taught in lecture. The first assignment provided a baseline measurement of reiterative versus critical thinking skills using a closed note assignment on a clinical scenario covering knowledge acquired in a pre‐requisite Human Physiology course. Half of the questions in the scenario required a reiteration of the lecture notes. The other half of the questions required students to critically ascertain and apply the physiological concepts at work within the scenario. Thereafter, students (n = 54 in 2013; n = 41 in 2014) were tested on six clinical scenarios during the semester. We hypothesized that by the end of the semester students would improve in applying physiological concepts to clinical scenarios. Overall, students performed better on reiterative questions compared to critical thinking questions, although by the end of each semester students increased their performance from an average of 52.9% (+/‐3.6%) to 71.1% (+/‐3%) correct answers on critical thinking questions. We conclude that this approach increases students' critical thinking abilities when faced with clinical scenarios thereby improving student preparation for medical school curricula.