Do clinicians understand the size of treatment effects? A randomized survey across 8 countries

Corticosteroid Injections Give Small and Transient Pain Relief in Rotator Cuff Tendinosis: A Meta-analysis

“…Furthermore, previous systematic reviews characterized the effect size with pooled standardized mean difference (SMD) alone and categorized the SMD values, both of which provide information of limited use to clinicians and patients [13,16,34].…”

Physicians and knowledge translation of statistics: Mind the gap

“…Visual presentation of statistical findings may be an excellent option to improve knowledge translation to clinicians. 10 Johnston and colleagues 1 found that the clinicians in their study understood magnitude of effect best when presented as a risk difference. Routinely presenting the risk difference with a plain-language interpretation and supplemented with a graph might increase the perceived usefulness of the findings from meta-analyses.…”

“…The idea that more education for clinicians will solve the problem is further refuted by Johnston and colleagues. 1 On surveying more than 500 family physicians and internal medicine specialists internationally, they found no significant association between graduate training in health research methodology and correct interpretation of the statistical formats used in knowledge synthesis. So, if training does not address the problem, perhaps we should take a closer look at how we present our evidence.…”

“…Many years later, it has become apparent that evidence from meta-analyses is not well understood by, and is therefore less accessible to, clinicians. In a linked research article, Johnston and colleagues 1 report on their evaluation of clinicians' ability to understand different statistical formats used as summary estimates from metaanalyses, in a well-conducted randomized survey of clinicians across eight countries. They concluded that all of the six statistical formats presented were poorly understood by the clinicians or were perceived as having limited usefulness.…”

When researchers stumble, clinicians fall and patients suffer

“…So far we know that most of our clinical knowledge is wrong and unconfirmed. In addition, we know that most clinicians fail to interpret research findings correctly [4]. Consequently, most clinicians will constantly face the possibility of violating the Hippocratic oath.…”