• Critical Thinking for Undergraduate Medical Students: benefits and barriers
  • AmirAli Moodi Ghalibaf,1,* Alireza Raouf Sheibani,2 Razieh Khadem,3
    1. Student Research Committee, Faculty of Medicine, Birjand University of Medical Sciences, Birjand, Iran.
    2. Student Research Committee, Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Science, Mashhad, Iran.
    3. Student Research Committee, Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran.


  • Introduction: Critical thinking is one of the major principles in the universities of the third millennium which is expressed as one of the aspects of thinking that has been accepted as a way to overcome difficulties and facilitate access to information in life. This kind of thinking helps individuals to differentiate correct information from incorrect information and make an accurate assessment and decision on events. As medical staff and medical students are a group of people who majorly interact with difficult situations that refer to human life, the most valuable property of an individual, they need some skills to make rapid and accurate decisions; therefore, it seems that critical thinking could help them in this term. The present study is designed to review the last knowledge about the roles, benefits, and barriers of critical thinking for undergraduate medical students; whether it is necessary to improve this skill during the learning in medical faculties, or not.
  • Methods: To determine the aims of the present study, a comprehensive systematic search was conducted through electronic databases including PubMed, Scopus, Embase, and Web of Science with the keywords “Critical Thinking”, “Medical Education”, “Medical Students”, and other related MeSH terms up to August 2022. Original studies, review studies, and references of the review studies were included. Finally, the associated studies which investigated the roles, benefits, barriers, limitations, and features of critical thinking in undergraduate medical students were reviewed.
  • Results: According to the reviewed studies, eight chrematistics were identified for critical thinking which are defining a problem, asking questions, examining evidence, avoiding emotional reasoning, analyzing assumptions and biases, avoiding oversimplification, tolerating ambiguity, and considering other interpretations. These features finally help an individual, e.g medical student, to avoid medical/clinical errors, increase productivity, better clinical decision making, bring in innovation through creativity, develop confidence, climb the leadership ladder, get higher grades, succeed in a career, and learn throughout life. Overall, reviewed studies were unanimous that low self-esteem, lack of risk-taking, and lack of motivation to risk are the primary barriers to critical thinking in undergraduate medical students.
  • Conclusion: In conclusion, it can be stated despite thinking critically can improve the performance of the medical staff and medical students, it seems necessary to investigate its barriers and limitation in more detail which can help us to find better solutions for teaching and learning critical thinking.
  • Keywords: Critical Thinking, Medical Education, Medical Student