Brain-based medical education model for expert’s clinical decision making

PURPOSE: The expertise of medicians in clinical decision-making is very important since it improves the quality of medical services provided to patients. This study analyzed the characteristics of the decision-making process and confirmed clinicians’ electroencephalography (EEG) characteristics by measuring their cerebral activity during clinical decision-making. This study aims to present learning directions for brain-based clinical decision-making to develop medical experts. METHODS: This study was performed in the following two projects: (1) a qualitative study of clinical decision-making in a clinical scenario and (2) an analysis of differences in cortical activity of experts and novices through EEG. RESULTS: In the 1st study, this study found that “confirmation of the patient’s chief complaints,” “physical examination,” and “radiography reading” steps, which showed the most prominent differences in the experts’ and novices’ decision making, were set as the significant steps of dentists’ clinical decision making. In the 2nd study, the experts’ and novices’ cortical activities were measured through a 32-channel EEG. In task 6, which had the lowest accuracy of diagnoses made by the experts, the brain activities in both groups were higher than in other tasks. CONCLUSION: This study developed and suggested a model of the decision-making process for experts and novices and suggested the basic directions for brain-based learning needed to raise experts based on brain activity.