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 CMD conducts a literature search and finds 12 RCTs on the same intervention. To synthesize the quantitative results, the most appropriate method is:

    Answer: Meta-analysis

    Meta-analysis statistically pools effect size estimates from multiple studies to produce a more precise combined estimate with greater statistical power.

  2. Specificity of a diagnostic test measures:

    Answer: The proportion of disease-free individuals who test negative

    Specificity is the true negative rate: the proportion of individuals without disease who correctly test negative, reflecting how well the test rules out disease.

  3. The Hawthorne effect in clinical research refers to:

    Answer: Participants performing differently because they know they are being observed

    The Hawthorne effect describes behavioral changes that occur simply because participants are aware of being studied, potentially biasing observed outcomes.

  4. A post-acute facility adopts clinical practice guidelines developed by a professional medical society. Guidelines represent which level of evidence translation?

    Answer: Tertiary evidence-based recommendations

    Clinical practice guidelines are tertiary resources that synthesize and translate bodies of evidence into actionable recommendations for specific clinical scenarios.

  5. In a study evaluating a fall prevention intervention, the outcome assessors are unaware of which participants received the intervention. This is an example of:

    Answer: Single-blinding of assessors

    Blinding outcome assessors to treatment assignment reduces detection bias by preventing differential ascertainment or reporting of outcomes based on group knowledge.

  6. A Medical Director reviews a quality dashboard showing the 90th percentile length of stay. Using the 90th percentile rather than the mean is most useful because it:

    Answer: Captures the experience of the longest-stay patients without extreme outlier distortion

    The 90th percentile reflects high-end utilization while being more stable than the maximum, helping identify patients with prolonged stays without being skewed by rare extreme cases.

  7. When applying evidence-based practice in a long-term care setting, a CMD must balance research evidence with:

    Answer: Clinical expertise and patient/resident preferences and values

    EBP integrates the best available research evidence with clinician expertise and individual patient values and preferences to guide decision-making.