Aim:

The purpose of the present study is to assess clinical reasoning skills of students at Anka-ra University School of Medicine. The study was conducted in the 2006–2007 academic year, including 156 Year 3 (64%) students and 98 Year 5 (72%) students.

Materials and methods:

Clinical Reasoning Problems (CRPs) developed by Groves et al. (2002) were used. Cronbach Alfa, the reliability coefficient of CRPs was found to be 0.76

Results:

The total mean score for CRPs of the whole study group was found to be 159,69 ± 36,19 (maximum 344). It was observed that CRPs total mean scores of Year 5 students were higher than those of Year 3 students (p< .001).

About three fourths of the students generated at least one strong hypothesis for seven out of ten clinical problem (CP). The CPs where the students generated the least strong hypothesis were those with the lowest clinical reasoning performances. The percentage of generating strong hypothesis of Year 5 students was higher than that of Year 3 students (p< .001).

Conclusions:

The results obtained from the study showed that experienced learners were better in clinical reasoning performance and generating hypothesis, when compared to novices. These results indicate that CRPs could be used for clinical reasoning assessment in medical education as reliable and valid means.

Keywords: Clinical reasoning, clinical reasoning problems, medical education, problem based learning