Integrating Clinical Reasoning Into Medical Students’ First Weeks of Education Improves Understanding of Cranial Nerve Anatomy

Clinical reasoning is essential to the practice of medicine. Such reasoning involves analytical (deductive) and non-analytical (recall) processes. Non-analytical reasoning is taught extensively in medical schools, and it dominates medical students' time as they review question banks and lecture notes, watch videos online, and memorize flashcards, algorithms, and illness scripts. However, few opportunities are provided in the curriculum to develop students' clinical reasoning skills, and when they are, the diverse levels of innate reasoning ability among students often lead to significant learning disparity. To address this deficiency, a pilot module on cranial nerve anatomy was developed to foster analytical clinical reasoning in an individualized manner. It was hypothesized that this module would not only introduce the foundations of an essential medical skill but also improve overall student understanding of the subject and reduce learning disparities among students. A comparative study was conducted using this module in one group and a didactic module in the other, employing pre- and post-testing measures. Results indicated a 26% improvement in average scores following the analytical module, whereas the control module showed no significant improvement. In addition, the disparity between students improving or not improving following the intervention was reduced, with 74% of students improving after the reasoning module and only 33% of students improving after the didactic module. A novel cranial nerve educational module introduced analytical reasoning in medical students' first few weeks of education, facilitating the learning of complex anatomy and reducing learning disparity between students.