Clinics in Laboratory Medicine
Volume 31, Issue 1 , Pages 201-215, March 2011

A Novel Educational Tool for Teaching Diagnostic Reasoning and Laboratory Data Interpretation to Veterinary (and Medical) Students

Department of Veterinary Pathology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Iowa State University, 1600 South 16th Street, Ames, IA 50011, USA

published online 20 December 2010.

The Diagnostic Pathfinder was designed to help students learn diagnostic problem solving by supporting them in explaining relationships among history and physical examination findings, data abnormalities, and the underlying mechanisms of disease. The Pathfinder has been used to teach diagnostic problem solving to veterinary students since 2001 and is currently in use at 10 colleges of veterinary medicine. This article describes how the Pathfinder works and summarizes results from studies exploring the effect of Pathfinder use on learning and satisfaction. Pathfinder characteristics are described in terms of their influence on cognitive load, and strategies are provided for effective implementation.

Keywords: Clinical pathology, Case based learning, Problem solving, Diagnostic reasoning, Expert thinking, Cognitive tool, Learning, Software design and development

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 The contents of this article were partially developed under a grant from the Learning Anytime Anywhere Partnerships (LAAP), a program of the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), US Department of Education, as well as 2 grants from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Higher Education Challenge program in addition to seed funding from Virginia Tech and Iowa State University. However, these contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education or USDA, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.

 The authors have nothing to disclose.

PII: S0272-2712(10)00149-6

doi:10.1016/j.cll.2010.10.007

Clinics in Laboratory Medicine
Volume 31, Issue 1 , Pages 201-215, March 2011

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