Cognitive Task Analysis for Expert-Based Instruction in Healthcare

Abstract: This chapter presents an overview of the rationale and evidence for the use of Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) in healthcare including: It presents a brief history and definition of CTA, the reason it is being adopted for healthcare education, evidence for its learning benefits when used in evidence-based instructional design and medical simulators, an example of how one of the evidence-based CTA methods was implemented in healthcare and suggestions for future research. The point is made that when evidence-based CTA methods are used, learning from CTA-based healthcare instruction increases an average of 45 percent when compared with current task analysis methods