Learning from mistakes: Defining case descriptions to improve clinical reasoning education

Project summary

Diagnosing a patient is a complex task. Education in diagnostic reasoning on the basis of fictitious cases (case) is currently a crucial part of general medical training. “Real” disease cases where a medical error occurred may be better suited to teach diagnostic reasoning. Medical errors partly represent the knowledge gaps of general practitioners. Moreover, reading about medical errors has an emotional impact, which may lead to better learning. We have therefore analyzed all 835 medical claims against general practitioners since 2012. We have asked ourselves these questions: What can we learn from these cases? How are real cases better than fictional ones?
Based on the results of this analysis, we will create better and more complete educational programs for general practitioners, in which we make proper use of case studies.

With the results of this project we help GPs in training to make better diagnoses and to prevent diagnostic errors.