Measuring Critical Thinking and Clinical Reasoning in Medical Schools

Lives depend on competent clinical reasoning.  Deans of Medical Schools around the country are administering Insight Assessment critical thinking test instruments (the Health Sciences Reasoning Test, the California Critical Thinking Skills Test and the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory) to document the critical thinking skills of prospective or current students. These data support student admissions, student advising, professional accreditation, learning outcomes assessment, program evaluation and research.

The attached research paper shows that the link between critical thinking and clinical reasoning is solid. Insight Assessment’s cost-effective tests of critical thinking skills rely on case-based scenarios to provide objective, valid and reliable measures of core problem solving and decision making skills. Used by government agencies, medical centers and hiring consultants to identify the strongest employment candidates, assessment solutions are available for on-line testing or paper-and-pencil testing.