Institute:Office of National Coordinator (ONC) Workforce Training Curriculum
Component:Introduction to Health Care and Public Health in the U.S.
Unit:Evolution of and Trends in Health Care in the U.S.
Lecture:Evidence-Based Medicine
Slide content:Some Terms Defined Bias: Inaccuracies that produce a false pattern of differences Blinding: Attempt to eliminate bias by hiding the intervention Validity: The extent to which a variable or intervention measures what it is supposed to measure 10
Slide notes:There are some common terms that are used when discussing evidence-based medicine, which we will define here. The first is bias. These are inaccuracies that produce a consistently false pattern of differences between observed and true values. The second term is blinding. Blinding is an attempt to eliminate bias by hiding the intervention from the patient, the clinician, and even the researchers who are interpreting the results. Obviously some interventions, such as surgery, cannot be blinded from the patient or clinician, but can be blinded from researchers investigating study results. The third term that is often encountered is validity", or the extent to which a variable or intervention measures what it is actually supposed to measure. 10