Medical education and quality of decision-making: Is there an evidence-based relationship?

A medical decision when facing a clinical problem is the result of a complex process involving clinical reasoning and decision-making components. Several biases and external factors may influence this process. Educational interventions may be helpful to modify some of those factors and enhance the quality of decision-making, such as the training of clinical reasoning, making physicians aware of potential biases, or training them to use some tools brought by the evidence-based medicine movement. However, the impact of such interventions remains difficult to quantify because high-quality data are lacking and few studies really assess patient outcomes. This article reviews the available evidence of interventions aiming at improving the quality of decision-making and stresses the importance of involving clinician teachers in medical education research. (C) 2010 Societe nationale francaise de medecine interne (SNFMI). Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.