Erasmus Summer Programme Courses
Take a look at all the courses in the Erasmus Summer Programme, and find the course right for you.
View all ESP coursesFundamentals of Medical Decision Making [ESP70]
Course highlights
EC points
0.7
Start date
14 August 2023
End date
18 August 2023
Course days
Monday to Friday (5 afternoons)
Course time
From 13:00 till 16:00 CEST
Faculty
Prof. John Wong
Course fee
€ 770
Location
Erasmus MC, Rotterdam NL
Level
Introductory
Prerequisites
None
Disciplines
- Clinical Research
- Clinical Epidemiology
- Biostatistics
- Epidemiology
- Genetic Epidemiology
- Health Economics
- Methodology
- Public Health
Course Materials
Digitally, download instructions will be sent before the start of the course, by e-mail.
Recommended book: Hunink MGM, Weinstein MC, Wittenberg E, Drummond MF, Pliskin JS, Wong JB, Glasziou PP. Decision making in health and medicine. Integrating evidence and values. 2d Ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2014. ISBN-10: 1107690471 ISBN-13: 978-1107690479 ASIN: B00N4PLW5A.
Calculator or spreadsheet software with laptop will be helpful for some of the in class and optional exercises
Design your programme
Use our Programme Configurator to design and plan your own programme.
ConfiguratorTestimonial
Detailed information about this course:
Description
Faculty: Prof. John Wong, MD
This course will provide an introduction to health care decision making. Given uncertainty, trade-offs and values, how should patients, policymakers and clinicians decide among diagnostic and therapeutic choices to make optimal decisions? Medical interventions may have benefits but also adverse effects, e.g., undesirable complications or false or inconclusive results.
Clinical and health policy decisions necessitate weighing benefits and harms and trading off competing objectives (life expectancy, quality of life, costs). We will discuss a proactive approach involving decision analysis to integrate evidence and values for optimal and efficient care choices in the face of uncertainty.
Course content includes interpretation of clinical data and test results, testing and treatment thresholds, estimating prognosis, decision tree construction (e.g., Markov models and Monte Carlo simulations), life expectancy, quality of life assessment, cost-effectiveness analysis, health technology assessment, diagnostic reasoning, and shared decision making.
Teaching methods: Interactive lectures, breakout group discussions and exercises.
Objectives
The student is able to:
- Apply a systematic rational approach to decision making in health care
- Experience patient-centered clinical decisions based on evidence and preferences
- Recognize the role of uncertainty in testing and treatment decisions
- Assess, value and weigh benefits and harms in medical decision making
- Describe how to consider economic costs in health care policy decisions
Participant profile
Those in clinical care, health research, quality improvement, technology assessment, academia, health industry, or government who have interest in learning how to improve the process by which medical decisions are made in clinical practice for individuals and in health policy for populations, including clinical researchers, clinical epidemiologists, decision scientists, public health or public policy researchers or administrators, and those in health technology assessment or value-based healthcare.
Assessment
Attendance