Epidemiology - this is the one I felt would be common sense. I felt this would be simple and straight forward.
No.
Not so.
Yikes.
To help me revise (no, hang on, to learn) I am going to try writing blog posts. Pray to God this will help you guys too. Let me know if it helps any of you...so, ok, here we go.
Epidemiology is 'the study of the occurrence and distribution of health related events, stats and processed in specified populations, including the study of determinates influencing such precesses and the application of this knowledge to control relevant health problems.' (Porto M. A dictionary of Epidemiology)
Distribution means the frequency and pattern of health events in a population.
Population is a group of people with a common characteristic.
Determinants are factors or events that influence health.
Epidemiology is a tool used by governments to determine investigations into public health.
Common terms used are
Sporadic - a disease which occurs occasionally and often irregularly
Endemic - Constant presence of disease within a given population.
Epidemic - above the expected level of occurrence of disease
Pandemic - an epidemic weidspread over several countries or continents.
Morbidity: any departure from a state of physiological or physiological well being.
Mortality: a number of reported deaths in a population in a specific time period.
Analytical Epidemiology - Basic question - "Is exposure and disease linked?"
Research questions/hypothesis - Do persons with exposure have higher levels of disease than persons without exposure?
3 major factors in epidemiology:
social factors
lifestyle factors
personal characteristics
Measure of disease frequency: Incidence = number of new cases of disease the developed during a specified period of time.
Prevalence - number of existing cases of disease at a given point of time or during a period of time.
I hope some of this may have helped, the next few blog posts go into specifics of exam questions you may find help you to revise! Good luck.
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