Attitude and Confidence of Faculty Members, Clinicians and Medical Students towards Biostatics: A Case study of Ilam University of Medical Sciences

Given the more complicating of the designing of researches, implement-tation and interpretation of medical research and developing of evidence-based medicine amended the knowledge of biostatistics in order to understand the results of other rese-arches and designing new research for fac-ulty members and physician. This study ai-med to compare the knowledge, attitude and confidence of faculty members, physic-cian and medical students towards biostat-istics at the Ilam University of Medical Sciences in 2011. Data was collected using a standard questionnaire that contain-ed the parts, demographic data, attitude and confidence to biostatistics and questions ab-out knowledge of participants towards bio-statistics. The base of attitude and knowle-dge score was considered 100 and that of the confidence score was 20. Data were an-alyzed using SPSS 16 and ANOVA and χ2 test. Overall, 91.3% and 80% had pas- sed epidemiology and biostatistics courses, respectively. 46.8% of the participants were medical students, 31.9% physicians and 21.3% faculty members. More than half of them stated that they did not read any jou-rnals regularly. Mean score of knowledge, attitude and confidence to biostatistics of participants were 24.4816.32, 62.809.54 and 12.702.59, respectively. There was a significant difference between the mean score, attitude and confidence of faculty members, medical students and physicians toward biostatistics (P<0.05). Discussion & The knowledge of physician and medical students was lo-wer than those of American ones. Physi-cians had the lowest level and faculty mem-ber highest level of knowledge to biostat-istics. Changing in the season of biostat-istics and epidemiology courses and traini-ng biostatistics for physician, medical stud-ents and faculty members is recommended.