Factors associated with medical student clinical reasoning and evidence based medicine practice

OBJECTIVES: To identify the factors associated with medical students’ clinical reasoning (CR) use and evidence-based medicine (EBM) use in the clinical setting. METHODS: Our cross-sectional study surveyed 44 final-year medical students at an emerging academic medical center in Singapore. We queried the students’ EBM and CR value and experiences in the classroom and clinical settings. We compared this to their perceptions of supervisors’ value and experiences using t-tests. We developed measures of teaching culture and practice culture by combining relevant questions into summary scores. Multivariate linear regression models were applied to identify factors associated with the students’ CR and EBM clinical use. RESULTS: Eighty-nine percent of students responded (n=39). Students reported valuing CR (p=0.03) and EBM (p=0.001) more than their supervisors, but practiced these skills similarly (p=0.83; p=0.82). Clinical practice culture and classroom CR experience were independently associated with students’ CR clinical use (p=0.05; p=0.04), and classroom EBM experience was independently associated with students’ EBM clinical use (p=0.03). Clinical teaching culture was not associated with students’ CR and EBM clinical use. CONCLUSIONS: Our study found that medical students’ classroom experience and the clinical practice culture influenced their CR and EBM use. The clinical teaching culture did not. These findings suggest that in order to increase student CR and EBM use, in addition to providing classroom experience, medical educators may need to change the hospital culture by encouraging supervisors to use these skills in their clinical practice.