Determining Biostatistics Knowledge of Students and Physicians in Medical School

The aim of this study is to determine statistics knowledge of physicians and students according to their major branches and statutes and find out their thoughts on the importance they give to the biostatistics education and finally decide at which semester the biostatistics education should be given. The questionnaire was applied to 498 undergraduate students, 103 resident physicians and 94 academic staff in Medical School. According to the data, the first choice of the students and the residents is that the biostatistics education should be given at the beginning of the residency. It is seen that there is a correlation between being agree with biostatistics is useful for career and being agree with biostatistics is very important for medicine science. Our results indicate that there is no significant difference on the level of the statistics knowledge between the undergraduate students and the resident physicians. Residents, who are involved in the researches gain increment both on knowledge of general statistics and tests such as non-parametric statistics and sampling techniques. Also another surprising result has been discovered that sampling knowledge of the academic staff is quite insufficient. In the light of those findings, we believe that great importance should be given to the biostatistics education so that the biostatistics education will improve physician’s analytical thinking ability, understanding