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“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing” -Albert Einstein

When a patient visits a doctor, a diagnosis is rarely immediately obvious, which means that the answer does not simply come from real life interactions with patients. Instead, a diagnosis is reached by combining information from a variety of sources. After recalling what he or she knows about how the body works and recognizing the physiology behind the patient’s condition, the doctor will need to focus on the appropriate organ system based on the patient’s complaints as well as results from lab testing and imaging. Now, the doctor will need to use critical thinking to apply all of the available information to discern what is normal or abnormal, and the reasoning behind any abnormalities. This is why critical thinking is important — critical thinking leads us to approach problems from different angles, and to reach unique solutions that exhibit deeper understanding of a subject. This section will introduce you to strategies to help you think critically as well as define critical thinking.

Getting Started with Critical Thinking

Let us start by asking ourselves — what is critical thinking? Some things that come to mind when you hear critical thinking might be puzzles, analyzing data or written works, or even having a debate or an argument. These activities all share the need for logical reasoning. Critical thinking is a method that requires you to apply prior knowledge from related concepts in order to reach a solution. For example, in order to solve a jigsaw puzzle, you would need to combine what you know about what the finished puzzle looks like together with spatial perception — that is, how the pieces and different portions of images fit together.

The following video attempts to put critical thinking into perspective

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Differentiation between Recall and Critical Thinking

Traditional studying such as listening to lectures, taking notes, and revision prompt students to mostly practice recall skills. Recall is simply repeating previously gained knowledge from memory, such as when you match a term to a definition on an exam. Recall questions have one definitive answer, while critical thinking questions may have many possible correct answers and are more open-ended. Critical thinking actually takes place in a different region of the brain than the region used for recall — critical thinking takes place in the prefrontal cortex, while recall takes place in the temporal lobe. Because of this, critical thinking may not come naturally to students who are not accustomed to innervating the neuron pathways in the critical thinking centres of the brain.

Critical thinking may be complex and require outside-the-box thinking. This skill also requires you to be organized in order to combine what you know about a variety of topics to come up with a solution for a problem. As you approach critical thinking questions, highlight important details and ask yourself what else you know regarding the topic, and what other concepts may be related. You will be able to apply your critical thinking abilities for problem-solving in almost any real world scenario, making it a truly invaluable skill.

The following video demonstrates an example of using information from other concepts to work a practice question.

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Differentiation between Critical Thinking and Clinical Reasoning

//clinical reasoning team to add on

In a clinical reasoning question, you are generally given a patient history or a story, and some data (e.g. labs or physical examination findings) and are asked about the patient’s condition. Clinical reasoning still gets you to exercise your critical thinking and recall – but the patient context now has to be taken into consideration.

Read the next section for strategies on how to apply clinical reasoning skills.