Statistics teaching in medical school: Opinions of practising doctors

A questionnaire was designed to investigate doctors' views about undergraduate training in statistics and the need for these skills in daily practice, with a view to informing future teaching. The questionnaire was emailed to all clinicians with a link to the University of East Anglia Medical School. Open ended questions were included to elicit doctors' opinions about both their own undergraduate training in statistics and recommendations for the training of current medical students. Content analysis was performed by two of the authors to systematically categorise and describe all the responses provided by participants.130 doctors responded, including both hospital consultants and general practitioners. The findings indicated that most had not recognised the value of their undergraduate teaching in statistics and probability at the time, but had subsequently found the skills relevant to their career. Suggestions for improving undergraduate teaching in these areas included referring to actual research and ensuring relevance to, and integration with, clinical practice.Grounding the teaching of statistics in the context of real research studies and including examples of typical clinical work may better prepare medical students for their subsequent career.The UK General Medical Council (GMC) sets out, and periodically revises, the standards which undergraduate medical students must obtain by graduation. Whilst not providing specific directions as to the level, amount or content of statistics teaching, the 2003 'Tomorrow's Doctors' document (which medical schools are working under at the time of writing) clearly states that graduates need to be able to "integrate and critically evaluate (scientific) evidence", "know about biological variation, and have an understanding of scientific methods, including both the technical and ethical principles used when designing experiments", be able to "evaluate effectiveness (of treatment) against evidence", "analyse and use numerical