The Thinker’s Guide to Clinical Reasoning

Clinical reasoning can be defined as thinking through the various aspects of patient care to arrive at a reasonable decision regarding the prevention, diagnosis, or treatment of a clinical problem in a specific patient.  Patient care includes history taking, conducting a physical exam, ordering laboratory tests and diagnostic procedures, designing safe and effective treatment regimens or preventive strategies, and patient education and counseling.

This guide does not address the knowledge and skills required to competently gather and interpret clinical data. Rather, the guide is intended to help clinicians take the next step, which is reasoning out the best course of action to take based on what is known or what can be hypothesized from clinical data.
(The Foundation for Critical Thinking, 2010: 55 pages)