IMPACT OF A MEDICAL-SCHOOL COURSE IN CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY AND HEALTH-CARE SYSTEMS

Many physicians have inadequate Knowledge of the science of medical de cision making and the health care system. We tested the impact of a me dical school course in Clinical Epidemiology, and Health Services Deli very using a prospective cohort design with participants from two clas ses. A 15 item pre-test was given to second-year students followed by the course which covered clinical and classical epidemiology, research methodology, biostatistics and health services delivery. The question s were embedded in the final examination and were also administered to a subset of the class prior to graduation. In addition, the survey wa s completed just prior to graduation by randomly selected students fro m the class without the course. The average score increased from 29.2% before to 85.5% after the course and 65.3% at graduation (p < 0.01). The scores from the non-course class averaged 45.4%, and were signific antly lower than scores of those who had taken the course (p < 0.001). The course increased students' Knowledge and much was retained until graduation. Non-course students learned only a small part of this info rmation from other sources.