Key facts

Sorry, this course was heavily oversubscribed and cannot take any more students into this class. Please use the course enquiry form to be kept informed of future runs of this course or to join the waiting list.

Overview

The aim of this module is to develop students' core knowledge and skills in applied clinical epidemiology through exploring how research evidence can be used to inform practice and how epidemiological information can be applied to both individual patient and health policy decisions. The module will be led by Dr Amanda Burls who is Director of Postgraduate Programmes in Evidence-Based Health Care, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Oxford.

Description

Grading Evidence

By the end of this section students will be able to:

• assess the overall quality of a research paper or report concerned with:
  • defining the magnitude of a health problem
  • evaluating the effect of a health intervention
  • causal inference (including the Bradford-Hill criteria)
• understand strategies for handling and adjusting for bias (selection, measurement and confounding)
• distinguish which of the methodological flaws in any paper are the most important and their implications for decision making

By the end of this section students will be able to:

• understand the other factors that influence decisions, such as quality of life, patients' values, ethical issues, and economics.
• understand how to integrate research in the clinical context to inform individual patient decisions taking into account the different risks, contexts and values of patients
• assess the reliability, validity and efficacy of a diagnostic test and how results should be interpreted in the context of the individual patient
• appraise and use decision analytic models and health technology assessments
• evaluate screening tests and consider their use in different populations
• consider the benefits and limitations of guidelines
• discuss the steps required in guideline development
• critically appraise a guideline
• consider the role of decision support systems in the implementation of guidelines

Staff

Dr Amanda Burls

Role: Tutor

Amanda Burls is Director of Postgraduate Programmes in Evidence-Based Health Care, and a Senior Fellow of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine,...more at the University of Oxford. In her role as a Senior Clinical Research Fellow in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University she is focusing on setting up and directing a novel internet-based project, ThinkWell, that aims to help the public understand health information to make their own health decisions and put them at the heart of the health research agenda.

In her previous post she was a Senior Clinical Lecturer in Public Health and Epidemiology in the Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, University of Birmingham and an Honorary Consultant in Public Health Medicine in the West Midlands Region. While at the University of Birmingham she founded the West Midlands Health Technology Assessment Collaboration (WMHTAC) and was its Director for ten years. WMHTAC is an NHS-funded unit that undertakes systematic reviews, research synthesis and economic evaluations of health technologies for the West Midlands regional and the UK national level NHS (e.g. for the NCCHTA programme and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE)). Prior to taking up her post in Birmingham she was Director of the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) in Oxford and was one of the founders of the CASP International Network.

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Dr Jose Emparanza

Role: Tutor

Jose is a pediatrician and current Director of the Clinical Epidemiology Unit, Hospital Donostia, a teaching hospital in San Sebastian, Spain. He...more is coordinator for the Basque Country of the CIBER-ESP research network and Coordinator for the Basque Country of the CASP program (Critical appraisal skills program). He has worked for many years in developing evidence-based practice, and teaching evidence-based practice and research methodology to health care workers.

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Dr Dan Lasserson

Role: Tutor

Dan Lasserson is a GP and Clinical Lecturer with research interests in cardiovascular disease prevention and management of long term conditions....more His main area of research is the presentation, diagnosis and processes of care for patients after transient ischaemic attack (TIA). This combines a number of methodologies including the qualitative and quantitative analysis of healthcare-seeking behaviour, development of diagnostic and referral clinical prediction rules for TIA and analyses of how healthcare systems influence recurrent stroke rates via variations in pathways of care. He is currently working with data from the Oxford Vascular Study (OXVASC) and is a Visiting Fellow of the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia

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Ms Nia Wyn Roberts

Role: Tutor

Nia is an outreach librarian at the University of Oxford Health Care Libraries. She has worked in health care libraries for over 8 years, and in...more recent years has worked closely with Department of Primary Care and Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, teaching searching skills and contributing to systematic reviews.

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Assessment methods

Accommodation

Accommodation is available at the Rewley House Residential Centre, within the Department for Continuing Education, in central Oxford. The comfortable, en-suite, study-bedrooms are rated 3-star, and come with free high-speed internet access and TV. Guests can take advantage of the excellent dining facilities and common room bar, where they may relax and network with others on the programme.

Scholarships

Details of funding opportunities, including grants, bursaries, loans, scholarships and benefit information are available on our financial assistance page.

Fee options

Programme Fee

For students enrolled on the MSc in Evidence-Based Health Care: £1450.00

Stand-alone short course fee: £1790.00

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Programmes including this module

This module can be studied as part of these programmes:

• MSc in Evidence-Based Health Care
• Postgraduate Diploma in Health Research
• Short courses in health sciences