Description and rules of a new card game to learn clinical reasoning in musculoskeletal physiotherapy

Teaching hypothetico-deductive clinical reasoning (CR) should be an essential part of the physiotherapy education system, but currently there are very few learning tools for teachers in the musculoskeletal discipline. The aim of this article was to describe and present the rules of a new game-based and structured didactic tool that can be used by teachers for 'players' (students and licensed clinicians) to learn systematic CR in musculoskeletal physiotherapy. Our tool is based on the 'Happy Families' card game, and we propose to use it as part of a classic musculoskeletal subjective examination-based hypothesis category framework and the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health model. It allows players to dynamically formulate hypotheses from clinical case studies. Each 'Family' of cards represents a hypothesis category. The game highlights the missing information and trains players to consider it in their CR. This game should efficiently structure all components of CR and is an interesting resource for all teachers. Its greatest strength is that it can be used with other category frameworks. Further studies are needed to assess the efficacy and efficiency of such a tool and to measure students' actual progress in learning the CR.

Automated summary

Teaching hypothetico-deductive clinical reasoning is important in physiotherapy education, but there are limited learning tools for the musculoskeletal discipline. This article introduces a new game-based tool using the 'Happy Families' card game to teach systematic reasoning. The tool allows players to formulate hypotheses and consider missing information.