Learning clinical reasoning and its communication

Effective clinical reasoning and its communication are essential to health professional practice, especially in the current health care climate. Health professionals are accountable for their decisions and service provision to various stakeholders. An important aspect of this accountability is the ability to clearly articulate and justify management decisions. Research across the health disciplines has not specifically addressed the interaction between communication and clinical reasoning in practice, neither has it explored modes and patterns of learning that facilitate the acquisition of this complex skill. The purpose of this research was to contribute to the profession's knowledge base a greater understanding of how experienced physiotherapists having learned to reason, then learn to communicate their reasoning with patients and with novice physiotherapists. Findings present learning to reason and to communicate reasoning as journeys of professional socialisation that evolve through higher education and in the workplace.