Clinical epidemiological principles in bedside teaching.

Abstract

Medical education emphasises the transmission of large amounts of short-lived medical information. Strategies must be developed to generate in the students, attitudes towards the independent search for and critical appraisal of evidences. Two complementary strategies are particularly well suited to promote these types of attitudes: clinical epidemiology and evidence-based clinical practice. Clinical epidemiology (CE) has been defined as "the science of making predictions about individual patients by counting clinical events in similar patients, using strong methods for studies of groups of patients to ensure that the predictions are accurate. The purpose of CE is to develop and apply methods of clinical observation that will lead to valid conclusions by avoiding being misled by systematic error and chance". On the other hand, evidence based practice has been defined as "an approach to the practice of medicine in which the clinician is aware not only of the evidences which support clinical practice, but the strength and soundness of such evidences". The paper discusses the usefulness of clinical epidemiology and evidence-based health practice for rational decision making at the bedside, and also as tools for clinical teaching. An example involving evidence-based strategies for the management of a patient with bronchiolitis in the emergency room is discussed.