Clinical Epidemiology

Code:

MI538

Acronym:

EC

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
OFICIAL	Medicine

Instance: 2022/2023 - 1S

Active?	Yes
Responsible unit:	Public Health and Forensic Sciences, and Medical Education Department
Course/CS Responsible:	Integrated Master in Medicine

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
MIMED	128	Plano Oficial 2021	5	-	3	28	81

Teaching language

Suitable for English-speaking students

Objectives

The objective is to apply the principles of epidemiology to the study of groups of patients.

At the end of the curricular unit the student is expected to be able to:

Assess the effect of diagnostic and therapeutic interventions on clinical outcomes.

Study the determinants and effects of clinical decisions.

Incorporate the results of clinical epidemiologic research into the decision-making process.

To identify the contribution of epidemiology to the quality of health care and patient safety.

Learning outcomes and competences

Diagnostic and therapeutic interventions are the factors most readily modified by health care providers affecting the outcome of illness.

The contents of this curricular unit will allow future clinicians to be able to critically appraise the available evidence to inform their decisions, as well as design clinical research studies to address the same sort of questions. Additionally, they will provide the know-how to use the concepts and methods of clinical epidemiology to evaluate their performance as individual professionals, or that of their institution.

The use of real cases or studies, either published in the literature or from our own institution, will illustrate the application of newly acquired knowledge in clinical vignettes or research problems, for the proposed objectives.

Working method

Presencial

Program

Efficacy/effectiveness and safety of interventions (diagnostic, secondary prevention, therapeutic)

                Clinical trials

                Non-experimental studies

Heterogeneity in the effect of interventions

Prognosis – outcomes, generalizability

Tools for risk prediction and clinical decision rules – development, validation, calibration

Hospital epidemiology

Epidemiological surveillance

Using clinical epidemiology for the evaluation and improvement of quality of health care and patient safety

Mandatory literature

Grant Fletcher; Clinical epidemiology: the essentials, Wolters Kluwer, 2020

Comments from the literature

Additional materials based mainly on published articles, selected and made available via moodle.

Teaching methods and learning activities

81 hours of student’s work, including 28 hours in class, individual study, ellaboration of a project in groups and evaluation tests.

Hours in class:

Lectures: 8 (one 60-minute lecture weekly)

Theorico-practical sessions: 10 (one 120-minute session weekly for each group of 15-18 students).

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation with final exam

Assessment Components

Designation	Weight (%)
Exame	60,00
Teste	20,00
Apresentação/discussão de um trabalho científico	5,00
Trabalho escrito	15,00
Total:	100,00

Amount of time allocated to each course unit

Designation	Time (hours)
Estudo autónomo	30,00
Frequência das aulas	28,00
Elaboração de projeto	23,00
Total:	81,00

Eligibility for exams

75% of practical sessions.

Calculation formula of final grade

Test*0.20+Oral Presentation of project*0.05+Written project*0.15+Final exam*0.60

Students who do not attend the class for oral presentation of their own group's project will have zero in that component.

None of the evaulation components has a mimimum classification. 

Approval if final classification >=10.

Classification improvement

For students who want to apply for an increase in the classification after being approved, only the final exam can be repeated in the proper 2nd chance period or the following year. 

Students who do the practical test and not the exam, or who are not approved in the academic year, may carry over the practical classification for the following year. If they wish, they can repeat the test and the project in the following year too.