Development and evaluation of eCREST: an online resource for future doctors

Clinical Reasoning

There are difficulties with clinical reasoning. The thought processes required to identify likely diagnosis in physicians are a leading cause of missed diagnostic opportunities in healthcare.

To reduce diagnostic delays, the Institute of Medicine recommends improving the teaching of clinical reasoning which should start in medical school, to equip future doctors with the skills necessary to make appropriate clinical decisions.

Clinical reasoning teaching in medical schools relies on exposure to real patients, for example during clinical placements. Organising learning with real patients is time and resource-intensive. Therefore, the range of cases students encounter during clinical placement is:

• unpredictable
• quality of supervision and,
• feedback may vary.

eCREST

Angelos Kassianos, Ruth Plackett and Jessica Sheringham were funded by NIHR’s Policy Research Unit for Cancer Awareness, Screening and Early Diagnosis and The Health Foundation to develop an online patient simulation resource for medical students to teach clinical reasoning.

It's targeted at final-year medical students in UK medical schools, was co-developed with:

• doctors-in-training
• medical students
• medical educators
• experts in diagnostics
• respiratory health
• primary care and,
• cancer.

This talk will focus on presenting the tool and its development, sharing headlines from a recent evaluation with medical students and ongoing work with tutors and learners from other healthcare professions.