Testing Medical Student Diagnostic Reasoning Using Clinical Data Visualizations

Abstract

This experiment aimed to (1) induce System-1-type diagnostic reasoning in medical students through the acquisition of cognitive user interface (UI) heuristics and (2) understand qualitatively how clinical data visualizations could enhance medical education. Third- and fourth-year medical students were presented patient cases through a novel electronic health record (EHR) design then asked to diagnose patients after being shown the cases either briefly and repeatedly (Group A) or twice over a longer period (Group B). Group A had higher accuracy than Group B. Findings support the possibility of inducing System-1 reasoning via UI heuristics and potential of integrating data visualizations in medical education.