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Activity Number:
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112
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Type:
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Contributed
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Date/Time:
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Monday, August 12, 2002 : 12:00 PM to 1:50 PM
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Sponsor:
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Section on Teaching of Statistics in the Health Sciences*
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| Abstract - #301665 |
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Title:
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Improving the Quality of an Introductory Biostatistics Course for Physicians
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Author(s):
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Daniel Byrne*+ and Patrick Arbogast+ and Shiva Gautam and Robert Dittus
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Affiliation(s):
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Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt University Medical Center
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Address:
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AA-3228 MCN, 1161 21st Avenue South, Nashville, Tennessee, 37232-2195, USA A-1124 Medical Center North, Nashville, Tennessee, 37232-2637, USA
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Keywords:
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Instruction ; quality improvement ; teaching
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Abstract:
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Physicians have often expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of biostatistics training and the retainment of basic statistical skills. A number of reports on teaching statistics to non-statisticians have evaluated quality improvement efforts while the course was taking place. Limited information is available on the effectiveness of quality improvement efforts with respect to the retainment of skills after the course. To address these issues, we researched and ranked the commonly-used statistical methods and statistical software reported in the leading medical journals and applied various quality improvement methods to two introductory biostatistics courses for physicians. At the end of the courses, we assessed the students' skills. Assessment of these skills included knowledge of the proper statistical test to use, implementation of the test, and interpretation of the results. Students were highly satisfied with the courses and successfully met pre-defined course objectives. We evaluated retainment of these statistical skills by re-administering our assessment tools and refined the courses based on these results. Future plans are to continue this assessment periodically.
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