Practice Test Geeks(CMD) Certified Medical Director Practice Test
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Research Methods & Evidence-Based Practice Flashcards

7 cards from real CMD practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.

Read the first 7 Research Methods & Evidence-Based Practice flashcards as text

  1. A Medical Director reviews a study with a 95% confidence interval for relative risk of 0.85–1.18. What conclusion is most appropriate?

    Answer: The result is not statistically significant

    A 95% CI that crosses 1.0 for relative risk indicates the result is not statistically significant at the 0.05 level, as it includes the null value.

  2. Which study design is most susceptible to recall bias?

    Answer: Case-control study

    Case-control studies rely on participants' retrospective recall of past exposures, making them vulnerable to differential recall between cases and controls.

  3. In quality improvement, a fishbone (Ishikawa) diagram is best used to:

    Answer: Identify root causes of a problem

    Fishbone diagrams visually organize potential causes of a problem across categories (people, process, equipment, environment), facilitating systematic root cause analysis.

  4. Number Needed to Treat (NNT) is calculated as:

    Answer: 1 divided by the absolute risk reduction

    NNT = 1 / Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR), representing how many patients must be treated to prevent one additional adverse outcome.

  5. A CMD evaluates whether a new pressure ulcer prevention bundle reduces facility-acquired pressure injuries. The most rigorous internal validity would come from:

    Answer: Interrupted time series with concurrent controls

    An interrupted time series with concurrent controls accounts for temporal trends and provides stronger evidence of causation than uncontrolled before-after designs.

  6. Publication bias in medical literature refers to:

    Answer: Selective reporting where positive studies are more likely published

    Publication bias occurs because studies with positive or statistically significant results are more likely to be submitted and accepted, distorting the overall evidence base.

  7. A Medical Director wants to benchmark facility performance against national standards. Which data source is most appropriate for post-acute care quality metrics?

    Answer: Minimum Data Set (MDS) quality measures reported on Care Compare

    MDS-derived quality measures published on CMS Care Compare provide standardized, publicly reported benchmarks for nursing facility performance nationally.