Why is critical thinking important as a doctor?

We believe that critical thinking is an important skill for any doctor, and that it will contribute to better patient-centred outcomes at lower societal costs and with greater job satisfaction among healthcare professionals.

How important is critical thinking?

Critical thinking will enable you to better express your thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. Better communication helps others to understand you better, resulting in less frustration for both of you. Critical thinking fosters creativity and out-of-the-box thinking that can be applied to any area of your life.

What is critical thinking used for?

Critical thinking skills allow you to understand and address situations based on all available facts and information. Typically, using critical thinking at work involves processing and organizing facts, data and other information to define a problem and develop effective solutions.

Do medical students have the ability to think critically?

In healthcare studies, many medical students score poorly on tests that measure the ability to think critically, and the ability to think critically is correlated with academic success. 24 25 Evaluations of strategies for teaching critical thinking in medicine have focused primarily on critical appraisal skills as part of evidence based healthcare.

Do medical professionals need critical thinking training and evaluation?

Medical professionals who could thinking critically in their own discipline would have difficulty thinking critically about problems in other fields. Therefore, ‘domain-general’ critical thinking training and evaluation could be non-specific and might not benefit the targeted domain i.e. medical profession.

What are some examples of people not thinking critically in medicine?

For instance, most common people have no basis for prioritizing patients in the emergency department to be shifted to the only bed available in the intensive care unit. Medical professionals who could thinking critically in their own discipline would have difficulty thinking critically about problems in other fields.

What is the best book on critical thinking in medicine?

Jonathan Howard has written a superb book, Cognitive Errors and Diagnostic Mistakes: A Case-Based Guide to Critical Thinking in Medicine, that epitomizes the message of SBM.