Lectures in Medical Statistics for Clinicians Using Internet Resources

• Activity Number: 191
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 10, 2004 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Teaching Statistics in the Health Sciences
• Author(s): Todd G. Nick*+
• Companies: University of Mississippi Medical Center
• Keywords: biostatistics education ; evidence-based medicine ; physician training ; internet ; clinical research

Abstract

A new course was started for fellows and physicians using internet resources to illustrate important concepts. The goal of this course was to improve the clinicians' statistical knowledge. The lectures were six 1.5-hour sessions held once a week. Each participant was provided a laptop with internet access. The topics covered included setting-up hypotheses, describing data, comparing means and percentages, assessing diagnostic accuracy, regression and correlation, and understanding simple and not-so-simple aspects of multivariable modeling. Each session used various internet sites to compute statistics. The internet was also used to retrieve medical research articles to illustrate concepts. Most clinicians do not have access to statistical software nor do they want it. However, the internet may be a feasible alternative since it has sites that can compute statistics and it's free and easy to use. Clinicians seemed very interested in learning about importing data to a site to compute descriptive and inferential statistics. Feedback was positive and many participants expressed interest in forming a working relationship for future research projects.