Helping Doctors and Patients Make Sense of Health Statistics

Martignon, Laura; Gaissmaier, Wolfgang; Kurz‐Milcke, Elke; Schwartz, Lisa M.; Woloshin, Steven

doi:10.1111/j.1539-6053.2008.00033.x

Cited by 1,018 publications

(970 citation statements)

References 151 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

890

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Additionally, our findings appear to be generalisable, since in subsets of the MINT where results were available for comparison, FTs' performance was similar to that of medical students and doctors in previous U.S. studies (Sheridan and Pignone 2002;Gigerenzer et al 2007;Anderson et al 2011). Although other researchers have shown that medical students and doctors are prone to error in drug-dose calculation (Rowe et al 1998;Simpson et al 2009;Harries and Botha 2013), and in interpreting medical statistics (Sheridan and Pignone 2002;Windish et al 2007;Gigerenzer et al 2007;Wegwarth et al 2012;Johnson et al 2014), we are not aware of any other study that has explored clinician numeracy in comparable to depth to ours.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 74%

“…Although other researchers have shown that medical students and doctors are prone to error in drug-dose calculation (Rowe et al 1998;Simpson et al 2009;Harries and Botha 2013), and in interpreting medical statistics (Sheridan and Pignone 2002;Windish et al 2007;Gigerenzer et al 2007;Wegwarth et al 2012;Johnson et al 2014), we are not aware of any other study that has explored clinician numeracy in comparable to depth to ours. Almost all previous studies have been based on short tests, with between four and eight questions: a size that calls into question the value of the tests, since short tests tend to be unreliable (Schuwirth and Van der Vleuten 2011).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 46%

“…We observed little correlation between previous achievements in math at high-school and MINT score (r = 0.185 for level of math instruction, and r = 0.284 for math grade); this result is consistent with the finding of Ben-Shlomo et al (2004) in relation to the performance of medical students in epidemiology and biostatistical tests. On subsets of the MINT where data were available for comparison purposes, FTs performed significantly better than non-medical populations (Schwartz et al 1997;Sheridan et al 2003;Sikorskii et al 2011), and at a similar level to U.S. medical students and doctors (Sheridan and Pignone 2002;Gigerenzer et al 2007;Anderson et al 2011) (Tables 5 and 6). Psychometric analysis of the MINT is shown in Table 7.…”

Section: Overall Outcomementioning

confidence: 82%

“…These errors harm patients and waste valuable healthcare resources (Gigerenzer and Grey 2011;Frontier Economics 2014;Malhotra et al 2015). Although it is known that medical students and doctors may have difficulty with drug-dose calculation and interpreting medical statistics (Rowe et al 1998;Gigerenzer et al 2007;Windish et al 2007;Simpson et al 2009;Harries and Botha 2013;Johnson et al 2014), it is generally assumed that they are sufficiently numerate for safe medical practice. The standard of clinician numeracy that doctors require for safe medical practice, however, has not been defined.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Clinician Numeracy: Use of the Medical Interpretation and Numeracy Test in Foundation Trainee Doctors

Taylor¹,

Byrne‐Davis²

2017

Numeracy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Patient safety is a priority in healthcare today. Good clinician numeracy in doctors contributes to patient safety, since it is essential for accuracy in prescribing, and in data interpretation. Evidence, however, suggests that although doctors are assumed to be highly numerate, they often make errors in drug dose calculation and struggle to interpret medical statistics. Having developed a new assessment measure, the Medical Interpretation and Numeracy Test (MINT), we describe its use to evaluate clinician numeracy in 135 recently qualified doctors in the UK ("foundation trainees," i.e., in their first two years post-graduation). The maximum possible test score was 43; the range of scores was 14 -42 (33 -98% correct), with an interquartile range of 29 -38 (67 -88%). Mean score was 32.76 (76%), with a 95% confidence interval of 31.6 to 33.9. Drug dose calculation errors were common, and potentially hazardous. Two thirds of participants had difficulty with simple data interpretation tasks designed for patients. Almost a quarter could not select the better of two treatment options when data were presented as relative risk reduction, absolute risk reduction or number needed to treat. Our study suggests that a significant proportion of medical graduates have poor clinician numeracy. Such doctors may harm patients by making mistakes in drug dose calculation and through flawed medical decision making. While further research is needed to investigate clinician numeracy in doctors, we believe that there is sufficient evidence to incorporate clinician numeracy into undergraduate and postgraduate medical education programs as a matter of patient safety.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 74%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 46%

Section: Overall Outcomementioning

confidence: 82%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Clinician Numeracy: Use of the Medical Interpretation and Numeracy Test in Foundation Trainee Doctors

Taylor¹,

Byrne‐Davis²

2017

Numeracy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In one experiment, Gigerenzer asked 160 gynaecologists to interpret some basic statistics about a woman's chances of having breast cancer, given that her mammography screening had come back positive. Just 21% gave the right answer 1 . "Our ability to de-bias people is quite limited," says Richard Thaler, director of the Center for Decision Research at the University of Chicago in Illinois.…”

Section: Top Downmentioning

confidence: 99%