Clinical Diagnostic Reasoning Training

Best-In-Class Virtual Solution for Developing Students’ Diagnostic Reasoning Skills

NEJM Healer offers medical schools, physician assistant programs, and other clinical training programs a systematic way to develop students’ diagnostic reasoning skills. This new online application packages the most current and reliable clinical information in a strategically curated library of patient cases to deliver an effective and engaging learning experience. NEJM Healer eliminates trendy avatars to reduce cognitive load and allow learners to focus on the actual clinical reasoning process.

Using NEJM Healer, students engage themselves in a simple to use but academically immersive 2D virtual patient encounter. They learn how to thoroughly gather data, create iterative problem representations, activate illness scripts, build broad differential diagnoses, and apply likelihood ratios to home in on a lead diagnosis and create a sound management plan.

NEJM Healer is a product of NEJM Group, a division of the Massachusetts Medical Society, the publisher of the New England Journal of Medicine

NEJM Healer brings clinical knowledge and clinical reasoning together, teaching and assessing at every stage of the patient encounter – from triage to history taking, physical examination, and obtaining lab results and imaging. Students become more thorough and efficient as they work through the virtual patient cases developed by a team of expert physician educators from NEJM Group. Along the way, they can also access expert illness scripts and diagnostic schema to support their learning.

An Innovative Approach to Teaching and
Assessing Clinical Reasoning

An Innovative Approach to Teaching and Assessing Clinical Reasoning

Demystifies Clinical Reasoning

NEJM Healer takes the mystery out of clinical reasoning by disaggregating the process into discrete steps and exposing the underpinnings of its data-driven process. NEJM Healer offers a standardized and measurable way to learn and deliberately practice diagnosis. Students learn how to approach complex scenarios with a level of detail that even experts may find difficult to articulate.

Combines Knowledge and Reasoning

Clinical practice combines both knowledge and reasoning. NEJM Healer brings expert-created illness scripts and diagnostic schemas together with highly interactive patient cases that require students to think critically as they build their differential diagnosis.

Offers Gold-Standard Content

NEJM Healer is the premiere resource for teaching and assessing clinical reasoning. NEJM Healer is from NEJM Group, the world’s most trusted source for medical research and education. NEJM Group editors assembled experienced clinicians and leaders in the clinical reasoning field to develop the advanced software engine and content library.

Provides Expert Assessment

NEJM Healer has a proprietary assessment system that provides users with a performance summary and detailed feedback on their clinical reasoning process in each virtual patient encounter compared to that of an expert. Students can also track their progress over time on key performance indicators, and educators can look across a cohort to gauge progress and target students in need of help.

Empower Your Students to Think
Like Clinical Experts

Empower Your Students to Think Like Clinical Experts

Patient Data Acquisition

NEJM Healer teaches learners to break down patient cases into granular data. Students learn through deliberate practice which patient responses, physical exam findings, and diagnostic test results are likely to be relevant to their differential diagnosis.

Patient Data Acquisition

Differential Diagnosis (Dx) Builder

The Dx Builder is at the center of the NEJM Healer experience. After acquiring sufficient patient data, students move to the highly visual environment of the Dx Builder to narrow their differential diagnosis by assigning weighted values to the pertinent findings they’ve gathered. Students systematically work their way through the clinical reasoning process, considering how each datum affects the likelihood of the diseases in their differential. This iterative process helps the user determine their lead diagnosis.

Differential Diagnosis (Dx) Builder

Problem Representation

Throughout the virtual patient encounter, students are prompted to create and then update their problem representation. NEJM Healer measures users’ data acquisition skills to deliver targeted feedback at the end of each case. Students compare themselves to an expert clinician on all facets of the encounter.

Problem Representation

Performance Feedback and Assessment

Most programs lack a standardized method for assessing students’ clinical reasoning skills and providing actionable feedback. NEJM Healer breaks through this barrier with a proprietary, algorithmic assessment that provides case-level performance scoring, as well as detailed feedback on students’ clinical reasoning at each stage of the virtual patient encounter. NEJM Healer allows students to compare their decision-making to that of an expert. Instructors can drill down on individual student performance or look at trends across cohorts within the educator portal.

Performance Feedback and Assessment

Experience a Patient Encounter for Yourself

Deliberate Practice for Developing Sound Clinical Reasoning and Diagnostic Excellence

Virtual Patient Encounters Developed by PhysicianEducators and NEJM Group Experts

Virtual Patient Encounters Developed by Physician Educators and NEJM Group Experts

NEJM Healer provides clinical training programs with a systematic approach to teaching and assessing clinical reasoning. The product is based on established cognitive science and built around a library of carefully designed illness scripts covering the common diseases that students need to master on their journey towards independent practice and diagnostic excellence.

Master clinicians and leaders in the field of clinical reasoning created the
illness scripts and virtual patient encounters that incorporate:

Most Common Chief Complaints / Concerns

Core Systems

Common Diagnoses

Standard Labs and Imaging

Different Levels of Case Complexity

Variety of Patient Profiles

◎ Most Common Chief Complaints / Concerns

◎ Core Systems

◎ Common Diagnoses

◎ Standard Labs and Imaging

◎ Different Levels of Case Complexity

◎ A Variety of Patient Profiles

> View a live case demo

Supports the Formal Instruction of Clinical Reasoning

NEJM Healer also supports the formal instruction of clinical reasoning as part of a focused course syllabus, a point-in-time assessment (e.g. OSCE or end-of-rotation exam), or across the broader curriculum spanning pre-clinical and clinical learning. Educators can assign cases to a class and assess individual learner’s reasoning skills using systematized performance data. Instructors can also debrief cases with students in a live classroom setting. Finally, faculty can assign additional cases to students who require added clinical reasoning support and create clinical remediation plans that include NEJM Healer.

Longitudinal Learning Benefits Across Cohorts

M1 / M2

By practicing with NEJM Healer cases, early student learners gain confidence in the iterative process of clinical reasoning. NEJM Healer provides programs with deliberate practice for gathering patient information, making an initially broad differential diagnosis, and looping back to acquire more pertinent data in order to narrow their diagnoses sufficiently to make initial decisions on management and treatment.

NEJM Healer provides programs with a standardized approach to teaching the diagnostic reasoning process. These interactive cases can be used in H&P courses, across systems-based instruction or in clinical foundations modules.

M3

Assessment of clinical reasoning skills can be particularly challenging during clerkships where educators’ evaluations of students typically focus on testing clinical knowledge and observation on the wards. Adequately assessing and fine-tuning learners’ clinical reasoning skills is often impossible due to limited time and group settings.

NEJM Healer removes these constraints and provides educators with a tool for direct student evaluation in clinical reasoning - an evaluation that is needed for students to advance toward independent clinical practice.

M4

Identify clinical reasoning deficits among your M4 class as they begin the transition to residency.

Establish a systematic assessment of students’ diagnostic competency before graduating from your program.

NEJM Healer offers a virtual fingerprint of each student’s data gathering and decision-making history and progress on the path to sound clinical reasoning and diagnosis.

Best-In-Class Virtual Solution for Developing Students’ Diagnostic Reasoning Skills

NEJM Healer is a product of NEJM Group, a division of the Massachusetts Medical Society, the publisher of the New England Journal of Medicine

An Innovative Approach to Teaching and
Assessing Clinical Reasoning