Abstract
BackgroundAll clinicians require statistical interpretation skills to keep up to date with evidence-based recommendations in their field. However, statistical illiteracy among clinicians is a highly prevalent problem with far-reaching consequences. The few available that report statistical literacy improvements after educational interventions do not measure for how long these benefits last. To estimate statistical illiteracy among Latin-American clinicians across multiple levels of training and to evaluate a 10-h course at multiple timepoints.MethodsUsing an online questionnaire, we evaluated; self-perceived statistical proficiency, scientific literature reading habits and statistical literacy (using an adaptation of the Quick Risk Test). Separately, we evaluated statistical proficiency after a 10-h statistics course in a group of Internal Medicine residents at a tertiary center in Mexico City across multiple time points between November 2020 and February 2021.ResultsData from 392 clinicians from 9 Latin American countries were analyzed. Most clinicians (85%) failed our adaptation of the Quick Risk Test (mean score = 2.6/10, IQR:1.4). The 10-h course significantly improved the scores of the Internal Medicine Residents (n = 16) from 3.8/10, IQR:1.8 to 8.3/10, IQR:1.4 (p < 0.01). However, scores dropped after one and 2 months to 7.7/10, IQR:1.6 and 6.1 / 10, IQR:2.2, respectively.ConclusionStatistical Illiteracy is highly prevalent among Latin American clinicians. Short-term educational interventions are effective but, their benefits quickly fade away. Medical boards and medical schools need to periodically teach and evaluate statistical proficiency to ameliorate these issues.
Highlights
Most medical schools and medical board recognise the importance of Statistical Skills for practising clinicians [1]
In total 392 from 9 different countries and 53 different medical schools were included in the analysis
To our knowledge, this is the first attempt at estimating Statistical illiteracy among Latin American Clinicians
Summary
Most medical schools and medical board recognise the importance of Statistical Skills for practising clinicians [1]. Evidence suggests that cheap, easy-to-implement and short-term interventions can improve statistical skills among clinicians [10]. In their 2018 study, Jenny, Keller and Gigerenzer [11] demonstrated that a 90-min training session in medical statistical literacy improved the performance (from 50 to 90%) in 82% of the participants using a multiple-choice Statistics test. It was not evaluated how quickly these improvements fade away after the educational intervention. To estimate statistical illiteracy among Latin-American clinicians across mul‐ tiple levels of training and to evaluate a 10-h course at multiple timepoints
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