Basic Course on

Quantitative Research Methods, Clinical Epidemiology and Applied Biostatistics for Healthcare Practitioners


The quality of clinical care depends on a foundation of knowledge called as evidence or experience that is interpreted in the appropriate context and continuously evaluated for clinical care to progress in the right directions. Every healthcare practitioner generates and evaluates knowledge when they interact with the recipients of care in diverse settings. Medical knowledge can be updated only through regular evaluation of these individual findings in a systematic, replicable, transparent process often called as research.

The process of research that is hidden behind several technical and confusing jargon is often intimidating and demotivating to a busy practitioner, either in clinical practice, a resident, or an undergraduate healthcare student. In this course, we aim to demystify the process of research integrating it with the routine clinical care that healthcare practitioners provide in diverse settings.



Highlights

One-on-one mentoring, individualized interaction & feedback

Anonymized data from actual research projects and clinical case scenarios.

Applied integration with clinical case situations


80% applied knowledge and 20% theory


Pre-requisites for the course

  • An exposure to clinical or public healthcare will help you navigate the course better.
  • A willingness to explore and evaluate new knowledge is preferable.
  • Familiarity with navigation of online spaces and a good internet connection is preferable.
  • Learning Objectives

    At the end of this course, you must be able to

    1

    Identify a Question from your clinical setting

    2

    Design Specific studies to answer specific types of healthcare questions

    3

    Design and implement a research study process

    4

    Choose and perform basic statistical tests appropriately

    5

    Analyze and interpret data- what do the statistics mean?

    6

    Understand how to interpret the effectiveness of interventions

    7

    Understand how to interpret the effectiveness of diagnostic tests

    8

    Communicate your results

    Course Structure & Pedagogy

    The course utilizes a self-paced modular approach with content delivered online through a combination of self- explanatory videos, documents and reading material that are available online 24x7.

    Participant learning will be assessed through a combination of

    • Quizzes-20%
    • Development of research protocols from individual clinical settings-30%
    • Basic Analysis of a dataset and Interpretation-30%
    • Communication of results using Power point & a narrative report -20%

    Certification

    Participants who successfully complete all modules with a minimum of 70% will receive a certificate of completion.

    About the Course Teacher

    Lead Faculty

    Dr Praveen Nirmalan trained as an ophthalmologist & Vitreoretinal surgeon from India and subsequently completed his Masters in Public Health (MPH) and a Public Health Ophthalmology Fellowship from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, USA. He has been a team leader and member of community based and clinical research in several medical disciplines including Ophthalmology, Obstetrics, Gynaecology, Neonatology, Obstetric Anaesthesia and Critical Care, Radiology and Public Health. He has been part of several international studies bringing his expertise in epidemiology and biostatistics to the teams he has worked with.  Dr Praveen is a clinical and public health research mentor for practicing clinicians and has mentored over 200 MD, DNB and PhD students through their dissertation work and research methods. He has over 80 published scientific articles to his credit and reviewed articles for many top tier national and international scientific journals.