Learning Collaborative Clinical Reasoning in Healthcare Education: An Integrative Review

Background: Collaborative clinical reasoning (CCR) occurs when two or more healthcare professionals reflect and negotiate an issue regarding patient's situation or care. This represents a crucial learning goal that needs to be achieved during healthcare education.

Purpose: To describe the characteristics of and the pre-conditions for learning collaborative clinical reasoning in healthcare education.

Method: An integrative review was conducted. A systematic search was carried out in May 2020 (updated in August 2022) in four databases (CINAHL, Pubmed/Medline, Scopus and Eric/EBSCO). Thirty-three peer-reviewed research articles met the inclusion criteria and were included into a data quality appraisal and analysis. The data was analysed with inductive content analysis.

Results: The characteristics of learning collaborative clinical reasoning were described using the following categories: 1) the collaborative clinical reasoning learning method 2) the collaborative clinical reasoning learning environment and 3) the collaborative clinical reasoning learners. The pre-conditions for learning collaborative clinical reasoning were described using the following categories: 1) the learning situation when learning collaborative clinical reasoning, 2) interaction when learning collaborative clinical reasoning and 3) clinical context when learning collaborative clinical reasoning. The learning situation includes the pedagogical preparation before the learning of collaborative clinical reasoning. The interaction consists of facilitation, feedback and peer communication during the learning of collaborative clinical reasoning. The clinical context utilized in the learning of collaborative clinical reasoning needs to be realistic and familiar for the students.

Conclusions: The results indicate that interventions enhancing collaboration and clinical reasoning apply a variety of learning methods, however there are certain characteristics of and pre-conditions for learning collaborative clinical reasoning to be considered.