Postgraduate Course: Epidemiology for Health Professionals (GMED11105)
This course will be closed from 16 December 2013
Course Outline
| School | School of Clinical Sciences |
College | College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine |
| Course type | Standard |
Availability | Available to all students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Credits | 20 |
| Home subject area | General Courses (Medicine) |
Other subject area | None |
| Course website |
None |
Taught in Gaelic? | No |
| Course description | This course introduces the fundamentals of epidemiology, providing students with an understanding of different epidemiological concepts and approaches and investigative techniques, and essential statistical skills, relating to global and local health problems. It focuses on areas such as how to understand study design and how to choose the right study design, interpreting confidence intervals, p-values, relative risks and odds ratios, and understanding how to measure health and disease. It explores issues such as bias and confounding. The course is flexible, designed to be engaging and informative to people at all levels, whether just beginning to work with epidemiology or for those who have a basic grasp but wish to extend their knowledge further. The course provides an excellent platform for all health professionals building skills in interpretation of data, research design and clinical practice. It is also valuable for policy makers, for those engaged in the health industry and those working in NGOs and international agencies and organisations. It is extremely useful for those working in the NHS or other health services throughout the world, or those who have a teaching responsibility to health students.
|
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| Displayed in Visiting Students Prospectus? | No |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
This course will equip participants with the skills needed to understand and critically appraise published epidemiological studies. By the end of the course, students should:
be familiar with basic epidemiological concepts such as incidence, prevalence, rates, standardisation, association and causality, approaches to sampling;
understand and be able to describe the following epidemiological study designs: ecological studies, cross-sectional studies, case-control studies, cohort studies, randomised controlled trials;
understand what is meant by and what the implications are of bias and confounding and the strategies available for avoiding these problems;
be able to critically appraise published studies;
be confident with basic statistical concepts;
demonstrate an ability to undertake simple calculations and analyses using a statistical software package.
|
Assessment Information
Formal summative written assessment will constitute 60% of the student's grade. Online assessment will incorporate a variety of activities and will constitute 40% of the overall course grade and is taken to represent a formative assessment of learning throughout the programme.
|
Special Arrangements
This course will be taught entirely by distance learning, using the virtual learning environment Learn as the delivery platform. Course materials are protected by secure username and password access that will be made available to registered users.
|
Additional Information
| Academic description |
Not entered |
| Syllabus |
The course will concentrate on the following areas
Measures of disease frequency
Basic statistical concepts used in epidemiology
Practical application of statistical methods in epidemiology
The uses, advantages and disadvantages of different epidemiological study designs
Sources of error in epidemiological studies
Critical appraisal skills for epidemiology
|
| Transferable skills |
A 10 week interactive distance learning course. Those participating will receive online lecture materials and will be set assigned readings and specific online tasks/exercises relating to each week¿s topic. The total time required each week is approximately 15-20 hours. |
| Reading list |
Not entered |
| Study Abroad |
N/A |
| Study Pattern |
Not entered |
| Keywords | epidemiology, statistics, research design, critical appraisal |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Ruth Mcquillan
Tel: (0131 6)50 9238
Email: Ruth.McQuillan@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Ms Cristina Matthews
Tel: (0131 6)51 4152
Email: Cristina.Matthews@ed.ac.uk |
|
|
University Homepage