Hazard Ratio

Hello,

I promised my group a succinct definition of Hazard Ratio

For health risks that have a Hazard Ratio greater than one, it means that the chances of getting that health risk increased with the treatment. For health risks that have a Hazard Ratio less than one, it means that the chances of getting that health risk decreased with the treatment.

Does that make sense?


John

Hello

Dear all,

Welcome to the Evidence in Practice blog!

The plan is to use the blog to discuss issues relating to Evidence-Based Practice. You can access this as a resource at any time before, during and after the course. You will have received a password which enables you post issues for discussion here. We also use it to share new resources available or links to websites. For those of you who have never 'blogged', welcome to the world of blogging!

We are looking forward to meeting you all at Poole House for lunch on Friday 26th.

If you have any issues or concerns before the course, feel free to contact John or Tony.

Best wishes

John and Tony

Heterogeneity

Hello,

For those of you who are working with Systematic Reviews, there was an interesting article in last week's BMJ on heterogeneity.

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/334/7584/94?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=heterogeneity&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

Best wishes

John

Understanding screening results

Hi everyone,

Just to let you know that the National Library for Health (www.library.nhs.uk) has covered an interesting study reported in the BMJ evaluating how screening tests can be misinterpreted by staff and patients. It's a study evaluating how obstetricians, midwives and women understand the results of a screening test for Down's syndrome in an antenatal setting.

You can see the full study at: http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/abstract/333/7562/284

Best wishes,
Amanda x

Type I and type II errors

For those of you who wanted to know, Type I and type II errors are defined as:

Type I error
An error that occurs when a researcher rejects the null hypothesis when it is true and concludes that a statistically significant relationship/difference exists when it does not.

Type II error
An error that occurs when a researcher accepts the null hypothesis when it is false and concludes that no significant relationship/difference exists when it does.

Source: Glossary of research methods published by the University of Bath, UK. http://www.bath.ac.uk/e-learning/gold/glossary.html#N1984 Accessed 02-10-06

Thankyou

A big thank you to all of you who attended the two days at Poole House last week. John and I really enjoyed it and thought that you were a great group to work with. We will be publishing the evaluations and other bits and bobs on here and on the main website and we will let you know when we publish.

QOF data for all PCTs in England is now on the web: go to www.gpcontract.co.uk.

Hope you all had a good weekend - you worked hard!

Amanda

Tomorrow and blogs

Hi all,

Just to encourage you to use the blog. Thanks to those of you who have registered and to encourage others to do the same. It's there for you to post ideas, ask for help, offer comments and suggestions to support each other as you go through the course and to support you when you delve back into work.

Registration is easy (ask John) and click on 'blog this' at the top of the page when you want to post a message to the group (also press F5 to refresh the blog once you have published to see your message appear). We will publish useful weblinks, links to papers, presentations etc so keep visiting to make sure you don't miss anything (be warned - we published photos from the last group).

We are really looking forward to tomorrow.

See you very soon,
Amanda x

Countdown to Thursday....

Hi all

Thanks for the biographies some of you have sent in. It's nice to know who you are and find out a little bit about you.

John and I are really looking forward to the course and we wanted to remind you to print off the papers (if you haven't already) and to bring a calculator. For those of you who feel mathematically challenged - rest assured - it's only addition, subtraction, nothing too hard!

Some of you are concerned that you are not clinicians or diabetes experts. Don't worry, you will each bring a rich mix of experience and knowledge of working with the NHS. We will be taking you through the critical appraisal process and we don't expect you to be experts.

See you on Thursday,

Amanda x