Health and medical informatics education for nurses and health service managers
Section snippets
Nursing informatics education
The International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Nursing Informatics (NI) special interest group has established a working group on nursing informatics education looking into course accreditation, course type, core competency requirements and mode of delivery issues. In addition, members of IMIA NI are working closely with the European Commission funded Nightingale project which aims to develop a nursing informatics curriculum and courseware material to suit. The work began in 1996 and
Health service managers informatics education
Most established health and medical informatics programs have a strong medical or technological focus or both. The degree of integration of these disciplines varies considerably 4, 5. The Society of Health Administration Programs in Education [6]provides an overview of all Australian health service management educational programs. Only two Australian undergraduate and two post graduate programs integrate the study of information systems with health service management, some other programs
Educational needs
Having established that there is a need to improve health and medical informatics educational opportunities in general, these needs are now examined more specifically in terms of the nursing and health service managers' educational needs. An examination of the roles of nurses, health information managers and health service managers reveals that nurses are high level information processors in all areas of nursing practice. This may be described as the generation, management and processing of
Contemporary expectations requiring information usage
Most health systems today emphasise ‘best practice’ in an effort to improve overall performance in terms of organisational efficiency and effectiveness [16]. Of particular interest are outcomes. This requires the optimum use of information and communication technologies. It involves everyone, clinicians, managers and information managers to a greater or lesser extent in any health care setting. To meet the informatics educational needs of these groups requires flexible curricula as many
Issues encountered
There are limits to the computing infrastructure we can provide to our students. The modem pool is never large enough to meet the demand for remote access, technical support for students is frequently severely stressed and we are unable to provide the same low cost service to all our students. A large number of our students are computer illiterate when they enrol and a number of our new undergraduate students could be classed as technophobic. Limitations regarding the existing copyright laws
Conclusion
In conclusion their are a number of impediments to the progression of Health Informatics Education. These are the continuation of traditional organisational structures and outdated processes, a lack of appreciation of the discipline by decision makers and the general public, and a shortage of suitably qualified teachers. Curricula need to suit new roles using a multidisciplinary approach. University structures need to be such that they facilitate multidisciplinary course delivery and
References (20)
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Education and training of health informatics in Europe
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