Clinical Decision Making (AG Schmidmaier)

Research topics

The general goal of the medical education research group is to improve patient care by fostering clinical decision competence of medical staff and herewith avoidance of errors in medicine. This is to be achieved by (1) facilitating diagnostic competences in simulation-based learning environments in the university context. For this purpose we are working within the DFG (German research foundation) funded research group COSIMA (https://www.en.for2385.uni-muenchen.de) together with education experts from various fields. The goal of the COSIMA research unit is to analyze how simulation-based learning environments in the university context can be designed and implemented in order to facilitate the acquisition of diagnostic competences, in particular in early and intermediate stages of competence acquisition. These research activities are in close relation with the Munich Center of the Learning Sciences (http://www.en.mcls.lmu.de). Furthermore we are working on (2) cognitive causes for errors in medicine and instructional interventions to avoid these errors. This is in contrast to many research that was done by measuring primarily accuracy as outcome for educational studies on clinical decision competence. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of errors during the clinical reasoning process provides the basis for targeted interventions. As clinicians and clinical educators we particularly focus on medical contents that are highly relevant and important for patient care. The third big topic of our work is (3) evidence based curricular development. In a bench to bedside manner we are implementing scientific findings of our laboratory studies into the regular curriculum of the LMU medical school and into regular postgraduate training and continuing medical education. This work is in close collaboration with the Institute for Medical Education at the University Hospital, LMU Munich (http://www.klinikum.uni-muenchen.de/Institut-fuer-Didaktik-und-Ausbildungsforschung-in-der-Medizin/en/index.html) and with the Munich Academy for Medical Education of Physicians (https://maaef.de).