Understanding Critical Thinking to Create Better Doctors

Medical students master an enormous body of knowledge, but lack systematic problem solving ability and effective clinical decision making. High profile reports have called for reforms in medical education to create a better generation of doctors who can cope with the system based problems they would encounter in an interdisciplinary and collaborative environment and make better reasoned decisions for quality patient care. To achieve this critical thinking is at the very heart of development of new medical knowledge. Critical thinking (CT) can be defined as the ability to identify and analyse problems as well as seek and evaluate relevant information in order to reach an appropriate conclusion. Medical academics and practitioners have raised concerns about the low levels of critical thinking and stress the need for fostering critical thinking among medical practitioners. This article attempts to provide a conceptual analysis of critical thinking with reference to medical education along with measures to foster critical thinking through relevant teaching learning and assessment methods.