Essential clinical epidemiology in clinical education.

Some people might consider that to call for physicians to have skills in dealing with the linking of scientific evidence to medical practice in developing countries would be an excessive demand. However, those who are practicing evidence-based medicine nowadays are not ahead of their time but simply up to date. The developed countries are ahead. In these countries, medical societies are requiring such skills to be in the curriculum for almost all specialities, and particularly in general internal medicine. In the United Kingdom, the Board of the College of Physicians already recommends the teaching of clinical epidemiology and systematic reviews in the residence program and requires these skills in their examinations. In the United States, the Task Force on the Internal Medicine Residency Curriculum and Graduate Education in Internal Medicine suggests these concepts should be an integral part of the graduation and residency curriculum, in the following words: