ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Med.
Sec. Healthcare Professions Education
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1566097
This article is part of the Research TopicInnovative Teaching and Learning in Health Education and PromotionView all 38 articles
Enhancing Clinical Reasoning Skills Through Tailored CPC in Pathology
Provisionally accepted
- Hangzhou City University, Hangzhou, China
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In medical education, fostering students' clinical reasoning skills is crucial for assessing their clinical proficiency; however, developing a Clinical Pathological Conference (CPC) model tailored to the unique needs of early-stage learners remains an intriguing avenue for exploration. This study aims to enhance the clinical reasoning and critical thinking abilities of early-stage students in pathology laboratory instruction through the introduction of a customized CPC teaching method.Specifically, the study involved 279 undergraduate students from the clinical medicine program at Hangzhou City University, with participants divided into two groups: the 2021 cohort received traditional teaching methods, while the 2022 cohort was taught using a reformed CPC case-based approach. Evaluations encompassed post-class case analysis scores, final exam scores, overall evaluation scores, and an online survey to gather feedback on teaching content, student engagement, and learning outcomes. The results demonstrated that students who underwent the CPC case teaching method exhibited higher levels of enthusiasm, participation, learning efficiency, and clinical reasoning abilities compared to those following traditional teaching methods. While generally well-received, feedback suggested there is room for improvement in group collaboration and personalized guidance. Consequently, the study concluded that the course-specific CPC teaching method effectively enhances students' learning enthusiasm, classroom participation, learning efficiency, and clinical thinking abilities in pathology laboratory instruction, paving the way for future research to explore the design and implementation of CPC methods in other foundational medical courses and evaluate their effectiveness.
Keywords: Clinical reasoning skills, pathology laboratory instruction, foundational medical courses, course-specific CPC teaching, Early-stage students
Received: 24 Jan 2025; Accepted: 07 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 LI, Tan, Fang and Dong. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jingyin Dong, Hangzhou City University, Hangzhou, China
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