Education is like baking.  It’s pretty easy to measure out the ingredients, but mixing them together in just the right way to make something amazing is really, really, really hard. For me, great educational content is engaging, relevant, accessible and then adds that little bit of seasoning to make you want more.  Well look no further, sit down, grab a plate and slice yourself  big slab of this EM content from our friends over at TheNNT.

I’ve been a huge fan of this site for a while, and I have it on my short list of must go to EBM (evidence based medicine) content. I share it with residents late at night as a jumping off point for conversation, with patients, and even friends who are interested in knowing how good (or not) the therapies we offer them really are.  The group over at The NNT describe their work like this:

The NNT is an intuitive and simple way of estimating how likely it is that a treatment or medicine will help an individual person.

And they are right.  The first time I found this site, I couldn’t stop clicking through the categories, it was addictive and frankly mind-blowing.The NNT makes the numbers accessible at a glance, but for EM people with some time on their hands, I suggest taking the time to go through their tutorial about how they get the numbers.  It’s a nice refresher (particularly for a person like me, who never feels entirely comfortable with his knowledge of statistics), and then head down to the “where we get the numbers” section of each entry to see the methodology and the references. In this age of big pharma, and questionable composite end points, it is really nice to find a smart, unbiased source of very useful information where truth still rules.  Enjoy.

Example of TheNNT at work