preview

Clinical Epidemiology: Evidence-Based Research

Decent Essays

Epidemiology is the foundation of evidence-based medicine. It involves study of distribution and causes of health events in a given community and application of the study to address the health issues (Szklo & Nieto, 2014). Clinical epidemiology is a term used to define a methodology for clinical research. As a tool for research, clinical epidemiology guides the clinicians to seek answers through evidence based research (Woodward, 2013). Clinical epidemiology acts as the basis for clinicians as they take care of patients. Before making decisions on treatment for the patients, clinicians should use facts gained from population-based studies. Clinical epidemiology makes it possible to use past experiences as a guide to care decisions for the patients (Fletcher, Fletcher & Fletcher, 2012). …show more content…

Nominal data does not have an inherent order. Dichotomous data is a type of nominal data which have one or two levels only. Ordinal data is made up of variables categories with undefined intervals based on an inherent order. Interval data can be continuous or discrete and is made up of an inherent order with equal intervals. For continuous data, any value in a continuum is used irrespective of the manner of reporting. Discrete data uses specific values which are expressed as counts (Fletcher et al., 2012). Measurement performance in clinical epidemiology is described based on accuracy, reliability, range, responsiveness, and interpretability. The effectiveness of data from a study is based on performance of measurement. Thus, the data from clinical epidemiology must be accurate and reliable to achieve its goal. Validity implies that data measured has to correspond to the true value being measured. On the other hand, reliability ensures that the data recorded can be reproduced (Fletcher et al., 2012). Effective performance of measurements should not contain data

Get Access