Developing curriculum in nursing informatics in Europe

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Abstract

The NIGHTINGALE Project (NIGHTINGALE Project: HC1109 DGXIII Contract and Technical Annex, European Commission, December 1995) which started on the 1st of January, 1996, after the approval of the European Commission, has a 36 month duration. It is essential in planning and implementing a strategy in training the nursing profession in using and applying healthcare information systems. NIGHTINGALE contributes towards the appropriate use of the developed telematics infrastructure across Europe by educating and training nurses in a harmonious way across Europe in the upcoming field of nursing informatics. NIGHTINGALE develops courseware material based on the curriculum development process using multimedia technologies. Computer based training software packages in nursing informatics will be the basis of the training material and the corresponding courses. CD-ROM based training and reference material will also be provided in the courses whereas the traditional booklets, teaching material and textbooks can also play an adequate role in training. NIGHTINGALE will disseminate all information and courseware material freely to all interested parties through the publications of the proceedings of the conferences, through the establishment of the world wide web (WWW) server in nursing informatics for Europe (http://www.dn.uoa.gr/nightingale), which will become a depository of nursing information knowledge across Europe as well as a dissemination node of nursing informatics throughout the European members states for the benefit and welfare of the European citizen.

Introduction

Various efforts have been initiated towards the formulation of a nursing informatics [2]curriculum focused on the nurses user needs at various countries and continents. Prominent efforts are those in the USA and Australia. In Europe one of the most recent efforts funded by the European Union is the NIGHTINGALE project [1]. The NIGHTINGALE project is based on previous experiences and user needs as described in the deliverables of a previous phase of the AIM Programme as well as of the EDUCTRA concerted action [3].

The project is focusing on the user needs of the nursing profession that is the largest profession in the health care providers group, as these needs are related to the telecommunication and Informatics area. It is usually misunderstood that the user needs of the nursing profession coincide with the needs of the other health care providers such as physicians, paramedical, hospital administrator, managers etc. It is now understood that the user needs of the nursing health care providers are quite specific, sometimes related to other professions, but mostly are different from the others.

The term, nursing informatics, is usually introduced to cover the specific needs in informatics (and now telematics) of the nursing profession. The project has as its main goal to bring into the surface, by means of series of workshops, the user needs of the nursing profession in telematics, which for many years have been neglected even though they are the largest user group of the health care professionals. The board on the user needs of the consortium and the expert panels will provide curricula of nursing informatics focused on various target groups of the nursing profession and will implement the curricula at a number of demonstration (training) centres across Europe. The implementation phase will use courseware that will be developed based on existing teaching material using multimedia development tools.

Section snippets

User needs

Curricula and training material focused in nursing informatics [3]is very limited. The results is that most users exploit existing health informatics curricula or material of which most of the volume is outside the objectives of the specific user target group (nurses). The other alternative is to import from the States courseware material in nursing informatics, which most of the time, is outside the scope and interests of the European nurses.

The consortium consisting of experts in nursing

Scope and objectives

The scope of this project is to provide curriculum development in the multi-disciplinary field of nursing informatics by consensus process at all levels of nursing education and training as well as implementation and demonstration of the curriculum at various sites across Europe.

The objectives of the NIGHTINGALE project are:

  • To survey the existing situation of nursing informatics in Europe and register the running courses.

  • To investigate the status of the nursing curricula related to informatics

Deliverables and outcomes

The above mentioned NIGHTINGALE objectives could be achieved through the following deliverables of the project:

  • Creation of an operational WWW server in nursing informatics. (http://www.dn.uoa.gr/nightingale).

  • Evaluation of the existing authoring material on nursing informatics

  • Development of curriculum in nursing informatics and courseware material as transparency packages.

  • Development on CD-ROM CBT software for nursing information systems, terminology in nursing informatics and nursing practice.

Formulation of groups

To achieve the above objectives two different groups were formulated:

A: The Users and Policy Makers team that will define the requirements for the curriculum development and will promote and disseminate the project output across Europe. This group has the following duties:

  • To represent the users in all NIGHTINGALE activities.

  • To contribute to the curriculum development.

  • To advise the consortium for the production of the deliverables.

  • To disseminate and promote NIGHTINGALE results across Europe.

The

Survey on nursing informatics courses

A questionnaire was developed to assess the status of nursing informatics education in the basic nursing curriculum. After the validation and enrichment of the questionnaire [4]by the consortium partners it was sent to 68 nursing schools in The Netherlands, Greece, Sweden, Denmark, France, Portugal, Germany and Belgium. The questionnaire will be distributed in the UK, Spain, Finland, Austria and Ireland in Fall of 1996.

A total of 34 questionnaires from five countries (Belgium, France, The

Quality assurance

An external body of internationally acknowledged experts in the field of Health Telematics was formed to assure the quality of all NIGHTINGALE project outcomes. This body consists of: (1) Professor Arie Hasman, University of Maastricht, The Netherlands; (2) Professor Evelyn Hovenga, Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, Australia; and (3) Professor Virginia Saba, Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA.

Two of the experts are from countries outside Europe. This selection aims to benefit

Conclusions

NIGHTINGALE will co-operate with all European actions and projects (IT-EDUCTRA, VATAM, EHTO, COAST, SOCRATES-ERASMUS) in the area of training health care professionals to provide consensus curriculum development in nursing informatics. Such a unified way of teaching nursing informatics would help the nursing profession to absorb the new technological developments of telematics and apply the new schemes, ideas and applications in their everyday work at hospital wards, management or

References (4)

  • NIGHTINGALE Project: HC1109 DGXIII Contract and Technical Annex, European Commission, December...
  • V.K. Saba et al.

    Essentials of Computers for Nurses

    (1996)
There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

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