An educated person differs from an uneducated, by the fact that he/she
continues to consider his/her education incomplete.
Konstantin Simonov
AASEBM organizes training courses (lectures and seminars) on the following topics:
TOPIC 1
Principles and methodology of evidence-based medicine
- Historical overview: definition; the term; predictors of genesis, the development of the idea.
- Clinical epidemiology – methodological base of evidence-based medicine
- EMB methodology: principles, steps of the algorithm; support systems for clinical decision-making.
- Evidence-based healthcare: choice of strategic directions of healthcare development on the basis of systematic reviews; effectiveness, safety and cost-effectiveness assessment of decisions; healthcare management tactics on 3 levels (primary, qualified and specialized medical care).
- Evidence-based medicine in Armenia: a situational analysis of the problem; opportunities and ways of implementation.
TOPIC 2
Medical ethics and bioethics
- Historical overview: terminology; medical ethics from Hippocrates to the present day; International code of medical ethics of the doctor.
- Bioethics: history of the origin, definition; differences from medical ethics; principles and problems of bioethics.
- Death and Dying: euthanasia; abortions; organ transplantations.
- The problem of incurable patients: palliative medicine; nursing homes; hospices; hospice movement.
- New technologies of biomedicine: cloning; "surrogate" motherhood; genetic engineering.
- Bioethics in Armenia: a situational analysis of the problem; opportunities and ways of implementation.
TOPIC 3
Institute of authorship of scientific-medical journal articles
- Historical overview: terminology; plagiarism from Herodotus to the present day; International copyright agreements.
- Institute of authorship of journal publication: honorary of gift authorship; guest authorship; ghost authorship
- Unfair practices in scientific research: fabrication and falsification of data; plagiarism; conflict of interest.
- Institute of authorship in Armenia: situational analysis of the problem.
TOPIC 4
Reading scientific-medical literature
- Informatics: concepts and definitions; scientific-medical information; development of information technologies from ancient times to the present day.
- The strategy and tactics of searching the necessary quality scientific-medical information: what, why and how to read; reading algorithm; "screening" and selection of the required information; "recycle bin" of the scientist.
- Comparative evaluation of scientific-medical articles; evidence-based hierarchy of information (4S).
- Implementation of the search results of scientific-medical information in clinical practice.
TOPIC 5
Scientific-medical information literacy
- Information literacy: definition; computer literacy; media literacy; information competence.
- What to read and how to read?
- Comparative evaluation of the information sources, quality scientific-medical information.
- Search and evaluation of sources of scientific-medical information on the Internet.
- The electronic database of evidence-based medicine: the search algorithm.
TOPIC 6
Principles and methodology of clinical research
- Design (structure): types of clinical trials; observation studies and randomized trials; "blinding" or masking methods; gold standard; reference test, quantitative and qualitative research.
- Systematic reviews and meta-analyzes: the structure and methodology of systematic reviews; the difference between systematic reviews and literature reviews; methodology of meta-analysis.
- Quality assessment of clinical trials: "hierarchy of evidence"; methodological assessment of the research; ethical assessment of the research.
- The practice of conducting scientific clinical research in Armenia: scientific-medical articles; dissertations; system of peer review of scientific papers.
TOPIC 7
Principles of Biostatistics for Doctors
- Historical overview: why, what and how to count - from Babylon to the present day; social sciences; political arithmetic; mathematical statistics.
- Terminology and basic concepts: the null hypothesis; normal (Gaussian) distribution; population and sample; credibility and trust; correlation and regression; the arithmetic mean, mode and median; variance and standard deviation; confidence interval and the "three sigma rule".
- Evaluation of data: quantitative and qualitative indicators; parametric and nonparametric tests; statistical tables; statistical programs.
- Medical statistics: what, why and how to teach doctors medical statistics; "pre-scientific" medicine; the first examples of the introduction of statistics in medicine; the theory of "small samples".
TOPIC 8
Standardization of medicine and healthcare
- Understanding the standards: terminology; aim and objectives of standardization in medicine; types of medical standards; comparative evaluation of different types of medical standards.
- Evaluation of the quality of medical care, "triad" Donabedian; effectiveness, safety and efficiency of medical interventions.
- Methodology of creation of medical standards: clinical guidelines; patient management protocols; diagnostic and treatment algorithms.
- Methodology of evidence-based medicine in the development, review, and evaluation of medical standards.
- Standardization of healthcare in Armenia: justification of the need; way of implementation; organizational-methodological aspects; financial-economic aspects.