A profile of statistics and research training of undergraduate medical students at South African universities

Statistics and research methodology are important components of a medical curriculum, since statistical analysis features in the majority of research papers published in medical journals. Medical practitioners need a basic understanding and knowledge of statistics and research principles. Evidence Based Medicine has given an enormous opportunity for statisticians to teach critical appraisal, and to orientate future doctors towards evidence-based practice. Literature on the teaching of statistics and research methodology are available for the United Kingdom, United States and elsewhere in the world but not for South Africa. It is therefore important to do this study on the profile of research methodology and statistics training for undergraduate medical students at South African universities in terms of the following: (1) What subjects (topics) are medical students taught? (2) Who does the teaching? (3) When is the learning programme / contact sessions taught during the medical students’ curriculum? (4) How is the learning programme / contact sessions taught to the students? I contacted the heads of the eight medical schools in South Africa via email to ask them whether they would give consent for the university to participate in my study. Thereafter I contacted the relevant persons of all the medical schools via email and asked them if they were willing to participate. They needed to complete a questionnaire and checklist. The checklist covered topics taught and the questionnaire the other research questions. The checklist and questionnaire were compiled based on the literature, and tested in a pilot study. One university did not respond, one university does not teach a formal Biostatistics course, one does the Biostatistics course as an elective programme and 5 universities teach the Biostatistics course during the medical curricula. Seven universities completed a checklist and six universities completed the questionnaire. I also requested the learning programme material from the universities to see what the aims and objectives of their courses are. Five universities supplied me with their learning program materials. In South Africa the specific statistics or research methodology courses show a vast variety of implementation dates at the different universities. Only one university reinforced the course during the 3 and 5 year, after it had been taught during the 1 st year. For the other, 4 universities teach the course in the 1 year, 1 in the 2 year and 1 in the 3 or 4 year, depending on when it is selected as an elective programme. The class sizes vary from 40 to 320 students. Four universities use practical classes and 3 universities use tutors. Three universities use research projects during their medical education. Five of the universities expose the students to Excel, directly in practical classes and indirectly through the research projects that the students must do. The aims and objectives of the South African universities seem on par with what is proposed in the literature. The persons responsible for the teaching of the statistics / research methodology courses are a doctor (2 universities), statistician (6 universities) and Applied Mathematics lecturer (1 university). The following topics are taught to the medical students at most universities in South Africa: (1) Study designs in medical research. (2) Exploring and presenting data. (3) Summarising data. (4) Probability. (5) Sampling. (6) Statistical inference. (7) Analysis of cross tabulation. (8) Critical reading. Four universities teach the topic “From sample to population”, “Analysis of the means of small samples”, scatter diagrams and correlations. Only three universities teach the topic of regression. Survival ana lysis and multiple comparisons are not seen as a core topic in the medical curricula. Recommendations are made for inclusion of topics in the courses, and for future studies in this field.