Statistics in Medicine: A risky business?

Three fundamental problems encountered by statisticians in the training of undergraduate medical (MBChB) students and at a personal level, by qualified doctors are: poor retention of key statistical concepts such as confidence interval, absolute risk,relative risk, odds ratio, p-value, statistical power and significance level; a lack of efficacy in communicating notions such as relative and absolute risk and more generally, the findings of systematic reviews to patients; and a lack of professional training in the use the statistical findings presented in medical journals to make informed decisions on the optimal choice for the patient.