Topic 1. Read the required reading. Epidemiological studies can evaluate risks of disease and protection from disease.
Discuss risks and how epidemiological studies impact interventions to reduce risks. Include some types of studies and specific risk examples in your response. How does this apply to evidence based medicine?
After completing this unit, you should be able to:
- Identify risk factors and risk prediction tools.
- Discuss types of studies used in epidemiology.
- Integrate knowledge of epidemiological principles toward the development and application of individual health promotion and preventive screening guidelines.
Course Outcome practiced in this unit:
MN505-1: Interpret epidemiologic data on morbidity and mortality related to acute and chronic disease states.
Unit 2 Introduction
Clinical Epidemiology: Risk
There are a number of statistics used in epidemiology to describe health status, quantify the extent of disease, and estimate the risk for developing disease or injury. It is essential that nurses be able to locate and interpret these statistics because this information is used to plan and evaluate health services and guide health policy.
Characteristics that result in increased chances of disease or injury are known as risk factors. Some are not changeable, such as age or sex, or perhaps geographic location in certain instances. However many can be altered. Recognizing risk, and risk calculations is an important part of epidemiology. Concepts in risk include, exposure, time, causal and non-causal factors, and risk prediction or stratification.
Studies help us to identify and understand risks. Prospective, and retrospective studies are related to the time, from the present toward the future or looking back at data or historically. The Framingham Heart study is an example of a famous prospective cohort study that has been conducted for decades. When determining risk, we must consider probabilities, additional risks, or times of exposure. These types of risks are expressed in epidemiological terms; absolute risk, attributable risk and relative risk. Further when we look at studies that determine risk, we must evaluate for bias, such as recall bias, and confounding variables that could impede the validity of the results in some way. Finally the population studied should be constructed carefully to meet the intent of the study outcome. Random sampling, population based sampling, cohorts and other types of control groups help to hone the study design to answer the specific question.
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