Learning Clinical Reasoning uses a case-based approach to teach students the basics of clinical reasoning. The first section explains the chief components of the clinical reasoning process, such as generating and refining diagnostic hypotheses, using and interpreting diagnostic tests, assembling a working diagnosis, therapeutic decision-making, and examining and applying evidence, and also includes a discussion of cognitive errors.

The second section contains 69 cases in which clinicians "think out loud" about diagnostic and therapeutic dilemmas, and the authors critique these clinicians'' reasoning. This edition has thirty new cases from the New England Journal of Medicine and other sources and expanded discussions of evidence-based medicine, clinical practice guidelines, and cognitive errors.