How to Support the Development of Clinical Reasoning in Students in Psychology?

Clinical reasoning (CR) is defined as “the thinking and decision-making processes that allow the clinician to take the most appropriate actions in a specific clinical problem-solving context” (Nendaz et al., 2005). This process is thoroughly addressed in the literature concerning medical students (e.g., Audétat et al., 2017; Cairo Notari et al., 2020). Since clinical reasoning is poorly discussed regarding the education of future clinical psychologists, our objective is to illustrate a pedagogic design which aims at its development throughout the cursus in clinical psychology in the Faculty of Psychology of ULiège. Indeed, as Wilcox and Schroeder stated in 2015, “graduate school is an ideal time to provide clear, immediate feedback not only about students’ diagnostic accuracy but, more importantly, about their clinical reasoning: teaching students how to think like psychologists”.
In the Bachelor's program, students are made aware of the clinical reasoning through different educational devices, including two MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course), namely 1 : "Acting for one's health", and 2 : "Psychologist and speech therapist: EBP at the service of the patient". These MOOCS develop diverse theoretical knowledges through different learning paths (e.g., videos, expert interviews, quizzes). Also, they train several practical skills (e.g., literature research, cases analysis).
In the Master’s program, Jstudents in clinical psychology participate in a course which aims at developing an integrate approach of clinical psychology, beyond different theoretical perspectives in clinical psychology (e.g., psychodynamic, cognitive and behavioral, systemic, humanist). Concretely, students are trained to recourse to an evidence-based approach in their practice through – for instance - modeling, role-playing, and flipped classes. In Master 1, students focus their clinical reasoning on patients’ assessment while in Master 2, they focus on the elaboration of the therapeutic plan. In parallel to this integrate course, they participate in two internships and seminars supporting the development of the clinical reasoning through presentations of clinical cases and an introduction to the supervision via the "7-eyed model of supervision".
This communication will present in detail the different pedagogic designs used. Prospects for development will be discussed, particularly in view of the year of supervised practice that future clinical psychologists will have to complete.