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Description

The course will enable the user to read, understand and apply appropriate scientific research to their patients through critical appraisal.

Gives you unlimited access to the course for 6 weeks on any/all of your devices using your personal membership login.

Over 3 hours of web hosted podcasts, over 100 online questions to support understanding and retention of concepts and definitions.

Your personal certificate of course completion reflecting the anticipated completion time of 6 hours.

Delivered by the team from TheResusRoom podcast, a 5* rated iTunes podcast centred on evidenced based medicine in emergency care.

The course covers the following 19 sections

Evidence Based Medicine, what is it

• Examples of great evidence changing practice
• Examples of poor evidence changing practice

What is Critical Appraisal

• PICO
• Internal validity
• External validity
• Clinical significance

How to find papers to answer your question

• MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL etc
• Grey literature

How a paper is structured

• Authors
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Methods
• Results
• Discussion

Different forms of research

• Observational descriptive
• Observational analytical
• Experimental
• Qualitative

Different terminology used to describe research designs

• Cross sectional
• Longitudinal
• Retrospective
• Prospective
• Qualitative data
• Quantitative data

Different categories of evidence

• Expert opinion
• Case report
• Case series
• Case control
• Prospective Cohort Study
• Retrospective Cohort Study
• Controlled trials
• Randomised control trials
• Systematic Reviews
• Meta-analyses

Hierarchy of evidence

• Oxford levels of evidence

Further terminology to be aware of

• Chance
• Bias
• Confounding
• Internal Validity
• External validity
• Homogeneous
• Heterogeneous

Statistical methods

• Accuracy
• Precision
• Prevalence
• Incidence
• The hypothesis
• P-values
• Confidence intervals
• False positives
• False negatives
• Power calculations

Being Aware of Outcomes

• Statistically significant vs clinically significant
• Secondary outcomes, beware

Diagnostic studies

• The gold standard/reference standard
• The population tested
• Inter-observer reliability
• Cost of the diagnostic test

Terminology to be aware of in a diagnostic paper

• Case positive
• Case negative
• Test positive
• Test negative
• True positive
• True negative
• False positive
• False negative
• Sensitivity
• Specificity
• Positive predictive value
• Negative predictive value

Likelihood ratios & area under the curve

• Positive and negative likelihood ratios
• Fagan’s nomogram
• Categorical Likelihood ratios
• Area under the curve

Critical Appraisal of a Diagnostic Study

• Critical appraisal of the ADJUST-PE study
• CASP diagnostic study checklist

Therapeutic studies

• Randomisation
• Allocation concealment
• Blinding
• Intention to treat & per-protocol analysis
• Follow up
• The outcome of interest
• Composite outcomes

Treatment effect

• Relative risk reduction (RRR)
• Absolute risk reduction (ARR)
• NNT

 Critical Appraisal of a Therapeutic Study

• Critical appraisal of the PEITHO trial
• CASP RCT check list checklist

Final Assessment

• Online assessment via true/false questions
• CPD certificate generation