Skill needs for nurses in their role as health informatics professionals: A survey in the context of global health informatics education

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Summary

In the process of developing global health informatics education, a common understanding of educational outcomes is required. Therefore, an educational framework for health informatics professionals is desirable to support student mobility, trans-national and borderless education. Nurses form a significant part of the health workforce and need to be properly educated for their roles in health informatics.

To ascertain their perceptions of needs and priorities, we developed a web-based questionnaire and surveyed Australian nurses on the preferred knowledge/skills set for health informatics professionals. Among others, the questionnaire is based on the International Medical Informatics Association's (IMIA) set of recommendations on education and IMIA's scientific map. Benner's five levels of competencies were applied to measure the degree of competency required for each skill/knowledge.

Altogether, 82 Australian nurses completed the questionnaire. The nurses’ perceived degree of competency required for a total of 74 specific skills and knowledge in five skill categories is presented in this paper as well as the overall results for each of the five categories. Further, significant differences between the nurses’ primary roles and primary interest in health informatics are discussed.

The development of a comprehensive health informatics education framework needs to take into account nurses as well as other health professionals. Repeating the survey in other countries and for various professions is essential to develop an international educational framework.

Introduction

In the process of developing global health informatics education [1], [2], a common understanding of educational outcomes is required. This reflects the need to be able to characterise health informatics (HI) professionals by their graduate attributes. An educational framework for health informatics professionals as proposed in [3] can provide clarity about the relative position of different qualifications. This framework then supports decision-making regarding the progression between various educational sectors, including countries and providers. Such a framework would assist with program accreditation, positioning the results of any recognition of prior learning exercise, and the administration of credit-transfers. As a consequence, such frameworks provide a desirable infrastructure for supporting student mobility, trans-national and borderless education. It is highly desirable to establish such a framework for health informatics education as this would assist with the identified need to be able to characterise health informatics professionals by their graduate attributes.

Nurses form a very significant part of the health care workforce. A very large percentage (varying from 40 to 70% for different kind of hospitals, see e.g. [4], [5]) of acute hospital budgets are consumed by nursing services and it is increasingly difficult to meet nursing workforce demands. Specific nursing informatics projects exist, (e.g. the EU-funded Wisecare project [6] which established Workflow Information Systems for European Nursing Care). However, most ‘health’ projects focus on medicine and neglect nursing needs. For example, in the USA, a National Health Information Network (formerly: Infrastructure) is being developed [7]. While this approach is comprehensive from a medical point of view, it does not yet sufficiently cover nursing needs. In this context, it becomes very clear that nurses have a significant role in health informatics. More generally, nurses increasingly use information technology (IT), and some also deploy, research or develop health care IT. Consequently, they need to be adequately educated for their roles in health informatics. For these reasons, we developed a questionnaire to survey nurses on the preferred knowledge/skills set for health informatics professionals to ascertain their individual perceptions of needs and priorities. Thus, we can ensure we remain relevant and current in the content and delivery of such education and training and simultaneously provide the foundation for the development of comprehensive health informatics education.

The aim of this paper is to

  • outline methods used for the development of the survey;

  • present and discuss results from our survey in the context of global health informatics education.

Section snippets

Methods

The International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) endorsed a set of recommendations on education in health and medical informatics1 [8] in 1999 and a scientific map was developed in 2002 (//www.imia.org/endorsed.html

Demographics

Altogether, 82 nurses completed the questionnaire. The responding nurses (80%) were female, compared with 92% nationally [17]. The nurses (4%) were younger than 30 years, 21% between 30 and 39 years, 45% between 40 and 49 years, 29% between 50 and 59 years and 1% over 60 years old. While the average Australian nurse is 42.2 years old (27.2% < 35 years, 31.9% between 35 and 44 years, 40.9% 45 years or older, [17]), our average nurse was approximately 45 years old.

Seventy-one percent described

Discussion

A comprehensive health informatics education framework is needed to enable Australian and international collaborative health informatics education to function optimally. Developing a comprehensive educational framework for health informatics professionals is a tedious task, and nurses are a first, yet crucial step. Further steps will involve the extension of the survey to other health professionals.

In doing so, however, we cannot exclusively rely on Internet/web-based survey techniques as we

Conclusion

Firstly, the survey as well as the replication of this survey for other health professional groups and other countries will help universities to remain relevant and current in the content and delivery of health informatics education by providing insight into what health and health informatics professionals perceive are the required HI skills. Secondly, this will facilitate student mobility, trans-national and borderless education by establishing the foundation for a nationally and

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the nurses who took their time to complete the questionnaire.

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