How Can the Understanding of Medical Statistics Be Improved?

Knowledge of medical treatments is usually not equally distributed between physicians and patients. Often, doctors need to analyze the available data in the medical domain and then communicate the results about possible options to the patient. MARKUS A. FEUFEL has focused his research on the challenge of this communication. As he describes in this video, his research team found that it is not only the patients who have difficulties understanding medical statistics but physicians as well. In particular, they noted these difficulties in connection with the statistical format called „relative risks”. As a consequence, they developed suggestions and interventions to improve the doctor-patient communication and the understanding of risks connected to medical data.