KNOWLEDGE IN STATISTIC AND EPIDEMIOLOGY AMONG MALAYSIAN POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS: IS IT DIFFICULT FOR OUR TRAINEES TO PERFORM ON THE MOCK CRITICAL REVIEW PAPER?

Objective: critical appraisal is a process of systematically examining research evidence to assess its validity, results and relevance before using it to form a decision. a basic knowledge in statistic and epidemiology is important among postgraduate students in psychiatry to acquire the skills for appraising clinical research evidence. this is a descriptive study that attempts to look into the level of knowledge among the postgraduate psychiatry students in terms of statistic and epidemiology. methods: a total of 31 postgraduate students in their second (n= 26) and third year (n=5) master of medicine (psychiatry) and master of psychological medicine from three different universities, namely: universiti kebangsaan malaysia, universiti malaya and universiti sains malaysia participated in this research. the participants were asked to answer 7 questions within 30 minutes. the passing mark for this critical review paper is set at 25 out of 50. results: overall, only 32.3% passed the mock critical review paper. about 67.7% of the students passed their epidemiology component and only 19.4% passed the statistic component. conclusion: we found poor performance in basic statistics among psychiatric trainees which highlights the need for further improvement in the subject’s training