Greek Junior Doctors and Health Scientists Society, Athens, Greece;
2nd Department of Surgery, Metaxa Cancer Memorial Hospital, Pireaus, Greece.
Med Educ Online. 2014 Mar 12;19:23646. doi: 10.3402/meo.v19.23646. eCollection 2014.
PURPOSE: The aim of this study is to determine the perceived familiarity of medical residents with statistical concepts, assess their ability to integrate these concepts in clinical scenarios, and investigate their susceptibility to the gambler's fallacy and the conjunction fallacy. METHODS: A multi-institutional, cross-sectional survey of Greek medical residents was performed. Participants were asked to indicate their familiarity with basic statistical concepts and answer clinically oriented questions designed to assess their biostatistics knowledge and cognitive biases. Univariate, bivariate, and multivariate statistical models were used for the evaluation of data. RESULTS: Out of 153 respondents (76.5% response rate), only two participants (1.3%) were able to answer all seven biostatistics knowledge questions correctly while 29 residents (19%) gave incorrect answers to all questions. The proportion of correct answers to each biostatistics knowledge question ranged from 15 to 51.6%. Residents with greater self-reported familiarity were more likely to perform better on the respective knowledge question (all p<0.01). Multivariate analysis of the effect of individual resident characteristics on questionnaire performance showed that previous education outside Greece, primarily during medical school, was associated with lower biostatistics knowledge scores (p<0.001). A little more than half of the respondents (54.2%) answered the gambler's fallacy quiz correctly. Residents with higher performance on the biostatistics knowledge questions were less prone to the gambler's fallacy (odds ratio 1.38, 95% confidence intervals 1.12-1.70, p=0.003). Only 48 residents (31.4%) did not violate the conjunction rule. CONCLUSIONS: A large number of medical residents are unable to correctly interpret crucial statistical concepts that are commonly found in the medical literature. They are also especially prone to the gambler's fallacy bias, which may undermine clinical judgment and medical decision making. Formalized systematic teaching of biostatistics during residency will be required to de-bias residents and ensure that they are proficient in understanding and communicating statistical information.
目的:本研究旨在确定医学住院医师对统计概念的熟悉程度,评估他们将这些概念整合到临床情景中的能力,并调查他们对赌徒谬误和合取谬误的易感性。
方法:对希腊医学住院医师进行了多机构、横断面调查。要求参与者表明他们对基本统计概念的熟悉程度,并回答针对其生物统计学知识和认知偏差设计的临床导向问题。使用单变量、双变量和多变量统计模型来评估数据。
结果:在 153 名受访者(76.5%的回复率)中,只有 2 名参与者(1.3%)能够正确回答所有 7 个生物统计学知识问题,而 29 名住院医师(19%)则对所有问题都给出了错误答案。每个生物统计学知识问题的正确答案比例在 15%到 51.6%之间。自我报告的熟悉程度越高,对相应知识问题的回答就越正确(均 p<0.01)。对个体住院医师特征对问卷表现的影响进行多元分析表明,在希腊以外接受的教育,主要是在医学院期间,与较低的生物统计学知识得分相关(p<0.001)。略多于一半的受访者(54.2%)正确回答了赌徒谬误测验。在生物统计学知识问题上表现较好的住院医师不太容易受到赌徒谬误的影响(优势比 1.38,95%置信区间 1.12-1.70,p=0.003)。只有 48 名住院医师(31.4%)没有违反合取规则。
结论:大量的医学住院医师无法正确解释在医学文献中常见的关键统计概念。他们也特别容易受到赌徒谬误偏差的影响,这可能会破坏临床判断和医疗决策。需要在住院医师培训期间进行有系统的生物统计学教学,以消除住院医师的偏差,并确保他们熟练掌握理解和传达统计信息的能力。
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