An analysis of clinical reasoning through a recent and comprehensive approach: the dual-process theory

CONTEXT: Clinical reasoning plays a major role in the ability of doctors to make diagnoses and decisions. It is considered as the physician's most critical competence, and has been widely studied by physicians, educationalists, psychologists and sociologists. Since the 1970s, many theories about clinical reasoning in medicine have been put forward. PURPOSE: This paper aims at exploring a comprehensive approach: the “dual-process theory”, a model developed by cognitive psychologists over the last few years. DISCUSSION: After 40 years of sometimes contradictory studies on clinical reasoning, the dual-process theory gives us many answers on how doctors think while making diagnoses and decisions. It highlights the importance of physicians’ intuition and the high level of interaction between analytical and non-analytical processes. However, it has not received much attention in the medical education literature. The implications of dual-process models of reasoning in terms of medical education will be discussed.