Representations of Clinical Reasoning in PBL Meetings: The Inquiry Trace

Abstract

Background: Barrows has recommended that a particular approach to inquiry be utilized within Problem‐Based Learning (PBL).

Purpose: We describe an observational technique designed to document the inquiry and theorizing activities of a PBL team working through a clinical problem.

Methods: The Inquiry Trace is an analytic instrument that represents PBL group talk and captures the temporal quality of the clinical reasoning process. It consists of a list of diagnostic theories advanced by the group juxtaposed with the accumulating body of evidence pertaining to the case.

Results: The resulting matrix is augmented with annotations describing other significant events that occur (e.g., the generation of a learning issue).

Conclusions: Although what is recorded on the Inquiry Trace is not reasoning itself, it provides a temporal record of a sequence of observable events that mark the group's reasoning with respect to a case. It serves as a useful abstraction, therefore, for studying and understanding the reasoning process as it is enacted in the PBL meeting.