Developing the clinical thinking ability and therefore improving the clinical practice capacity are the core of the quality-oriented education and in the current medical education reforms. The reasons for retarding the development of clinical thinking ability in dental clinical probation were herein discussed. According to the similarity between mind mapping and clinical thinking, drawing mind map was used in the creation of the clinical knowledge system; various teaching techniques were used and classical clinical cases were shown; role playing as dentist and patient was used to mimic the clinical circumstance; dentist-patient communication was emphasized and methods to evaluate the clinical thinking ability were also developed. These strategies effectively developed the clinical thinking ability of the dental students.

Clinical education; Stomatology; Clinical thinking ability; Mind mapping