[Systematic teaching of differential diagnostics and information retrieval in medical education--a controlled study].

Teaching of differential diagnostic skills in medical education is often nonsystematic and touched only in a disease-based manner in the context of patient cases. We conducted a controlled study, in which a portion of fifth year students received systematic teaching of differential diagnostics and information retrieval for a period of ten weeks, whereas another portion continued in conventional basic training. We tested the students' problem-solving skills in both groups with a computer-assisted test. Students in the intervention group were more successful in the test and settled on the correct diagnosis more often than students in the control group.