Main description:

Making Sense of Medical and Healthcare Literature is essential reading for those involved in reading medical literature on a regular basis, interpreting medical statistics, and those who want to understand the evidence-based medicine process.

The work provides information on all aspects of interpreting clinical trial results and medical statistics, and encourages the reader to consider potential biases in clinical studies and related literature. The reader can learn about ethical considerations of clinical trials, and how to impart accurate statistical information to the individual patient.

The reader is also encouraged throughout to think about the questions they should be asking of the literature they read, and importantly provides a real example of a critically-appraised published journal article.

Making Sense of Medical and Healthcare Literature is essential for developing skills in critical appraisal of medical and healthcare literature.

Contents:

Table of contents:
Introduction (1) Sampling and Populations (2) Research Ethics (3) Clinical Trials (4) Observational Studies (5) Interpreting Risk (6) Statistical Hypothesis Testing (7) Sample Size Calculations (8) Kaplan-Meier Survival Analysis (9) Screening and Diagnostic Tests (10) Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (11) Qualitative Research Methods (12) Critical Appraisal of the Healthcare Literature: A Structured Approach (13) Critical Appraisal: An Example (14) Using the Literature to Treat the Individual Patient. Glossary