Statistical education for medical students-Concepts are what remain when the details are forgotten

Teaching statistics to medical students is a challenging and often unrewarding task. However, few would argue the need for statistics in the medical school curriculum. In recent years, there has been a growing call for teaching only statistical concepts in medical schools. We strongly oppose this opinion and offer an alternative approach. In this article, we present our experience in teaching statistics to medical students at the Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel. We then present the results of a recently held survey regarding the long-term contribution of the statistical curriculum to our students in different phases of their studies. We conclude by suggesting a new integrative statistical program, which incorporates the study of statistics into the entire medical curriculum. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.