Critical thinking is one of the core professional competences for medical students. The ultimate goal of critical thinking is to combine the highly individualized experience and comprehension with the generally applicable scientific cognitive system. Therefore in medical education

the cultivation of criti-cal thinking should embody the objective and the characteristics of critical thinking

such as rational restric-tion

dialectical thinking

empathy practice and scientific evaluation

and great attention to the principles and conditions of the application must be given. In the course of teaching design and implementation it's necessary to choose the appropriate point

to set up the teaching situation suitable for developing critical thinking

to optimize the structure of teaching content

to strengthen the practice of critical thinking method-ology and to value asking questions and so on.