Introduction to Clinical Reasoning (ICR)

Thank you for teaching in the Introduction to Clinical Reasoning (ICR) second year medical student course at USUHS. Your contributions to this course as a preceptor are essential to its success! This page was created to help you with a variety of ICR issues. Please click on the below links to access materials to help you with teaching in the course. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact the ICR Course Director, Steve Durning.
 
This is an introductory course for second year medical students meant to facilitate the transition from Reporter to Interpreter. This course is arranged as a series of symptoms, physical exam findings, laboratory test abnormalities, and syndromes (see syllabus link). The course runs throughout the second year of medical school (see MS-2 schedule link). Students are given paper cases for common and/or serious presenting diagnoses for each syndrome and they are asked to synthesize presenting symptoms and findings into a problem list, differential diagnosis, and at times the �next steps� in the diagnosis and/or treatment. The emphasis is on acquiring knowledge.
 
Students learn Reporting skills in the ICM sequence; ICR reinforces these reporting skills through further learning to characterize presenting symptoms (ICM-1, ICM-3) and recognition and interpretation of pertinent physical examination data (ICM-2, ICM-3). Data selection involves recognition of key symptoms and findings from the paper cases to synthesize a problem list and differential diagnosis. ICR promotes transition from reporter to interpreter in conjunction with Pathology (see MS-2 schedule). For assistance with constructing lecture and/or small group materials see lecture and small groups overview.
 
This course is not meant to serve as a comprehensive review of diagnoses that will be seen in the clerkships. ICR illustrates a variety of diagnostic reasoning techniques through examining a series of common symptoms, physical exam findings, laboratory test abnormalities and syndromes. The approach in ICR is consistent with reasoning theory by Bordage (teaching semantic competence/qualifiers), Charlin (promote knowledge organization, build illness scripts), Ericsson (deliberate practice) as well as Norman and others (schema theory)�see Clinical Reasoning Articles link.

ICR Course Director

Steve Durning

Helpful Links