Computer assisted instruction for teaching clinical decision-making

Abstract A computer-assisted instructional program was devised to teach problem-solving behavior associated with history taking. The program focuses on the problem of identifying the information value of patient history questions. A total of 68 freshmen and sophomore medical students used the computer program in conjunction with their course on physical diagnosis. Each simulated case requires the student to make a series of tentative diagnoses which are compared against the most likely diagnosis as determined by the computer. The system operates in two modes, one with feedback for instruction, and a non-feedback method for testing.