French academic physicians had a poor knowledge of terms used in clinical epidemiology

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• 作者：Candice Estellat ; Christophe Faisy ; Isabelle Colombet ; Gilles Chatellier ; Bernard Burnand and Pierre Durieux
• 刊名：Journal of Clinical Epidemiology
• 出版年：2006
• 出版时间：September 2006
• 年：2006
• 卷：59
• 期：9
• 页码：1009
• 全文大小：408 K

文摘

Objectives

To assess academic physicians' understanding and usage of basic epidemiological terms commonly used in medical journals.

Study Design and Setting

Observational study. A total of 274 physicians, working in a teaching hospital in Paris, France were asked to answer a questionnaire including four vignettes presenting the results of a therapeutic, a diagnostic, a prognostic study and a meta-analysis of clinical trials.

Results

A total of 130 (47 % ) questionnaires were returned. We observed the highest proportion of good answers for questions about absolute risk reduction (87.7 % ), sensitivity (84.6 % ), and specificity (80 % ); and the lowest for the calculation and use of the likelihood ratio (16.9 % and 9.2 % , respectively). The global mean score was 5.0/10 (95 % confidence interval = 4.6–5.4, range 0–9.4). Physicians got higher scores for questions related to treatment than for questions related to diagnosis: mean scores 7.1 (6.6–7.6) vs. 4.2 (3.8–4.6). Regression analysis did not reveal any significant relationship between global performance and physicians' age (r² = 0.002, not significant [NS])

Conclusion

Physicians demonstrated only moderate knowledge and usage of clinical epidemiology terms used in major medical journals. Their capacity to interpret quantitative data from medical scientific literature may be limited.