OVERVIEW

The Power of Skepticism and Critical Thinking Course is organized by Professional Development Resources (PDR), Inc.

Course Description:
The Power of Skepticism and Critical Thinking is a 3-hour online continuing education (CE/CEU) course that examines how positive skepticism and critical thinking are necessary in clinical practice.

The history of health care abounds with treatments that persisted (although they didn’t work) for many years without ever being seriously challenged. How did this happen? More to the point, how is it that this continues to happen today? At least a part of the answer can be found in a very long list of cognitive errors, fallacies, and biases that seem to be part of human nature. Human beings are endowed with the ability to reason and the need to find connections between things and events. The problem is that we have such a strong need to find connections that we sometimes see them even when they are not there. In health care, arriving at the wrong conclusion can be an error of life and death proportions.

This course defines and illustrates the many ways in which health professionals can fall prey to one or more thinking errors that can result in mistaken diagnoses, clinical errors, and reduced therapeutic success. Also reviewed are the powerful influences of propaganda, quackery, and pseudoscience. The antidote to thinking errors and pseudoscience is adherence to the sound principles of positive skepticism and critical thinking in clinical practice. This course offers the opportunity to uncover one’s own biases and learn new strategies and techniques for applying critical thinking skills. Included are how-to lists for evaluating new treatments, conference speakers, published studies, and internet content.

Learning Objectives:
• Identify the core elements of critical thinking
• List reasons skepticism and critical thinking are essential in health and mental health care
• Identify heuristics, fallacies, and biases that can reduce the effectiveness of health care treatment
• List ways health care professionals can learn to be better critical thinkers
• Name assessment instruments that are used to measure critical thinking skills
• Identify strategies that can be used to cultivate a critical thinking mindset