An Epidemiological Approach to Diagnosis

Abstract

A teaching method using an epidemiologic approach to diagnosis has been devised as the basic approach for helping third-year medical students learn the practical concepts of clinical epidemiology. Small groups of students, with the guidance of an instructor, use information about the distribution of diseases among subgroups of the population and knowledge of the circumstances under which a patient sought medical care to make a disease diagnosis for that patient. The student groups make the correct diagnosis at least five out of seven times without any additional clinical information. The short-term effectiveness of the method has been demonstrated by improved attitude of the students toward the relevance of epidemiology to patient-care problems.