de Souza C M
Educ Med Salud. 1983;17(1):7-20.
Today, epidemiology is no longer confined to the study of outbreaks of infectious-contagious diseases, but is shifting its focus to the chronic-degenerative diseases, and it is becoming increasingly necessary to train the clinician to apply its principles and methods in his medical practice. In his argument to this effect, the writer stresses the importance of bedside clinical work as a means to discovery and to the confirmation--or refutation--of hypotheses propounded in the experimental laboratory and in public health studies. As the prescriber of procedures for diagnosis and treatment, the clinician, it is asserted, is better placed than the epidemiologist to provide guidance for the solution of salient health problems. While of value in clinical research and the choice and analysis of preventive and curative methods, clinical epidemiology is also important for elucidating the natural history and causative factors of diseases, determining the effectiveness of new procedures, assessing the benefits to be gained from them, and evaluating the efficiency of the very health services that make them available to the population. Giving the clinician a basic understanding of epidemiology as an analytical instrument for the selection of methods of diagnosis and treatment, it is maintained, is the way to enhance his capacity for critical evaluation.
