Using and teaching Stata in emergency medicine research rotation

Participation in scholarly activities is a requirement in Emergency Medicine (EM) Residency Curriculum. A research project is a necessity for graduation for EM residents. To fulfill this requirement, EM residents have a mandatory research rotation. During this rotation, residents learn basic research designs, write protocols for IRB, and collect data. In addition, they are required to understand basic statistical concepts before the data are analyzed. I believe that their understanding will be enhanced if they are provided with the basic knowledge of a statistical program. During the EM research rotation, residents are introduced to Stata and research methods. I developed a manual explaining the basic operation of Stata, which includes, but is not restricted to the following: pull-down menus (rather than commands), 4 windows, 9 tabs, basic commands with pull-down menus, description and summarization of data, tables of frequencies, tables of mean, data input, data output, data import, saving files, graph commands with dialog boxes, box plots, histograms, and scatterplots. In my experience, introduction to Stata facilitated accurate data recording. It also provided residents the experience necessary to navigate Stata following the completion of the research rotation.