Risk literacy assessment of medical students in Brazil
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5712/rbmfc18(45)3802Keywords:
Education, medical, Predictive value of tests, Mass screening, Risk, Measures of association, exposure, risk or outcome.Abstract
Background: In order to accomplish the shared decision-making process, it is essential that health professionals are able to understand statistical data of the best available evidence, so that this information can be communicated to their patients. In this context, risk literacy is the ability to evaluate risks and benefits of a given action. Despite the relevance of this skill, research has demonstrated that many professionals and students have difficulty interpreting concepts of statistics and probability, therefore having low risk literacy. Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate risk literacy in medical students and how it impacts their ability to solve a problem concerning the positive predictive value (PPV) of a mass screening. Methods: Medical students from the 4th, 5th, and 6th years of the School of Medicine of Universidade de São Paulo were invited to answer a questionnaire comprised of the Berlin Numeracy Test (BNT), a validated instrument to measure numeracy, and a clinical problem regarding the PPV of a mammogram in the context of mass screening. To measure the level of risk literacy of medical students and to investigate whether there is an association between score in the BNT and the ability to correctly answer the clinical problem regarding PPV. Results: A total of 97 responses were collected, of which 19 (19.52%) participants answered 3 out of 4 questions of the BNT, and 61 (62.89%) correctly answered all the questions. In the clinical problem about PPV of cancer screening, there were 43 correct answers (44.33%). The mean BNT score of the participants was 3.41. Among the students who correctly answered the problem, the mean score was 3.76, and among the ones who answered incorrectly, it was 3.21. Conclusions: Despite the high numeracy measured by the BNT, students had a poor outcome in the clinical problem. This study reinforces previous findings that risk literacy is a difficult skill to be learned, even in individuals with high numeracy. However, the low response rate hinders a more precise interpretation of the results.
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