Teaching survival analysis in the Clinical and Translational Science Program at Mayo Clinic

Thomas M. Menino Convention & Exhibition Center 

Survival analysis is a commonly used statistical method across all medical fields, since improving survival is the ultimate goal for patients with chronic disease or potentially terminal illnesses, such as cancer or heart disease. However, teaching survival analysis can be challenging and innovative approaches are needed to reach learners of all levels. Often, survival analysis is taught to medical researchers with limited statistics knowledge. Teaching survival analysis to these learners need to focus on the basics of survival analysis, while also helping them learn the practicalities of how to do survival analysis for their own research studies. This entails basics on how to properly write-up the statistical methods, and how to properly interpret the results from these studies and other studies they may review. To do this, a traditional lecture-based approach is not the most efficient. For these students, a better approach is to provide real-world examples, hands-on experiences using statistical software, and assignments or projects that provide students the opportunity to run survival analyses, write up the statistical methods and results, and interpret the results. In this talk, I'll discuss the teaching methods and tools I've been using over the last 12 years to help medical researchers learn and interpret survival analysis so they can lead their own high-quality analyses.

survival analysis

teaching