Clinical Reasoning and Basic Science Knowledge: Assessing the Relationship in Medical Students

Various studies have investigated the impact of basic sciences knowledge on clinical diagnosis for skilled and novice physicians but, it is still a matter of controversy why and how clinical diagnosis and clinical reasoning are related to basic sciences knowledge. This study aimed to explore the correlation between basic sciences knowledge with clinical reasoning skills by evaluating the correlation between the scores of the basic sciences course with the score of the clinical reasoning exam.

Clinical reasoning exam was used to evaluate the clinical reasoning skills of all medical interns of two internal medicine rotations. Scores were evaluated for correlation with the basic sciences course scores and basic sciences national comprehensive exam results. statistical analysis was performed using an independent t-test, stepwise regression, and Pearson correlation coefficient.

All of the basic sciences course scores and basic sciences national comprehensive exam results correlated positively significant with total score of clinical reasoning exam (p-value=0/0001). and the score of clinical reasoning exam were most closely correlated with the average score of basic sciences course rather than to each course individually(p-value=0/0001).  No significant gender differences were observed in the data analysis.

The results of this study suggest that, learning basic sciences knowledge has positive correlations with clinical reasoning skills. However, this correlation is small to moderate based on the course. Our findings support the view that learning basic science knowledge is effective in the formation of clinical reasoning skills.