The trend of critical thinking disposition in medical students and its relationship with their academic performance

BACKGROUND: Critical thinking is one of the important skills required for medical students. It is considered as a main component in medical education and training competent physicians. The current study aimed to investigate the trend of critical thinking disposition of medical students and its association with their academic performance. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This descriptive cross sectional study was conducted in 2019 on 315 medical students of Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical sciences. A two-section questionnaire was used for data collection. The first section dealt with demographic characteristics and the second section included Ricketts critical thinking disposition inventory using t-test, analysis of variance, and Pearson correlation coefficient. RESULTS: Mean and standard deviation of critical thinking disposition of medical students was 121.85 ± 11.32. No significant difference was observed between the mean score of critical thinking disposition and years of study (P = 0.74, F = 0.590). Pearson correlation test also showed no significant association between critical thinking disposition and the students’ grade point average (P = 0.89, r = 0.007). CONCLUSIONS: The results of the current study showed that medical students’ level of critical thinking disposition is above average, and there is no significant correlation between critical thinking disposition and years of study and academic performance of the students. It seems that the educational process in medical school has not been effective in improving the level of students’ critical thinking disposition.