This message has been cross posted to the following eGroups: Statistical Consulting Section and Biopharmaceutical Section .
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When I joined the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research three years ago I was asked to prepare a series of lectures on biostatistics to the research fellows and residents in the Mainline Health hospital system. I was warned that this had been tried unsuccessfully in the past. Well I prepared a series of 6 one hour lectures to present during lunch hour once a month. I thought that I could do this easily. After all I had taught a course to health science majors a couple of times at Cal State Long Beach and had written a book based on that course. So the first time I tried it I got through one nice introductory lecture and three months later I gave lecture 2. We were never able to schedule lecture 3. The problem seemed to be that physicians are very busy and it is hard to find time to get them to sit down for an hour for a stats lecture. Also it is difficult to make it interesting for them. Later on I gave a two lecture sequence to a group of nursing research fellows. The nurses really like my first lecture which included cartoons from the 'Cartoon Guide to Statistics" but had trouble with the second one. Although I think I am good at communicating statistical concepts I find some things were particularly difficult to get across.
I decided to do two things. The first was to create a text specifically designed for medical researcher. This would include only the topics I consider essential for research in medicine. Then to overcome the problem of the availability of physicians to attend lectures I thought about doing an online course at statistics.com. So I have designed an online course for four weeks at statistics.com to teach biostatistics to the medical research audience. A difficulty I will have with this is getting the word out to the medical research community. From my experience at Lankenau I see an unmet need for this. I have also taught a course on biostatistics to MPH and PhD students in the School of Population Health at Thomas Jefferson University. I think my text would be suitable for such a course. My book was published by Wiley this August. I would like others who teach courses like this to consider my book.
I imagine some of you have also ran into this problem teach biostatistics to physicians and I would like hearing about your experiences.
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Michael Chernick
Director of Biostatistical Services
Lankenau Institute for Medical Research
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