Abstract
Clinical thinking is not only the basis and premise of clinical reasoning and decision-making, but the necessary quality to cultivate reliable, responsible, and emotional excellent doctors. Virtual reality technology provides a real clinical learning environment for medical students, which can bridge the gap between medical theory and medical practice and save educational resources. Virtual reality is helpful to cultivate medical students' clinical thinking and prepare for their clinical practice. Through the deconstruction of clinical thinking, this paper determines the connotation and constituent elements of clinical thinking, puts forward the model framework for virtual reality technology to promote the development of medical students' clinical thinking, and explains the impact of virtual reality technology on the development of medical students' clinical thinking, clinical reasoning, and critical thinking from the aspects of virtual reality situation, teaching activities, and virtual reality characteristics.