Thinking about Informatics Competency

I listened to an interview posted by CHCF at: http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2008/6/23/Efforts-Aim-To-Increase-Health-Care-IT-Informatics-in-US-Nurse-Training-Programs.aspx?av=1&topicID=54 entitled "Efforts Aim To Increase Health Care IT, Informatics in U.S. Nurse Training Programs". It featured comments from Connie Delaney, (University of Minnesota), Beverly Malone, (NLN) and Joyce Sensmeier, (HIMSS).

From the website: "The National League for Nursing says schools and colleges need to incorporate more IT training into their curricula. It's not enough just to train nurses in basic computer skills, nurses also need to be proficient in how health care IT works and be able to use the technology to its best advantage, the league contends."

I reviewed the presentations by Joyce Sensemeir, Carol Gassert and Mary Anne Rizzolo at the Rutgers Conference and it got me thinking a bit more about the whole issue of nurses and informatics competencies.

Multiple sources point to a need for “informatics training” but how can we make the definition mean something to the bedside nurse or unit level manager? “The intersection of nursing science, information science and cognitive science” is a wonderful phrase but still seems distant from practice. Some people describe computer literacy is informatics, some focus on the electronic health record; others concentrate on the electronic tools used to capture data. At one level it’s a matter of functional competency – how do I enter/retrieve data from a record or how do I create a spreadsheet. At another level it is about how to use technology to make sense out of data, how to seek technologies that will enable them to work, communicate and collaborate more efficiently.

I think we need examples relevant to nurses, students and faculty other than using PDAs as a mobile library and how to enter/retrieve data from an EMR. I see informatics as about collecting, storing and retrieving data; interpreting data to become information, and applying information as knowledge not only to patient care but also personal and professional development.

It seems that in the IS world we give our clients lots of wonderful tools. Office applications, Internet access, project management software, and hardware of all sorts are pretty much everywhere. The big disconnect I see is our customers often don’t know how to use these tools beyond a very elementary level. Many still use yellow legal pads to collect data, then enter it into a spreadsheet or database. Once it’s there they may still resort to manually counting because they don’t know how to use formulas and sorting. PowerPoint presentations get too big to email because they have added high resolution photographs and resized them to display a fraction of the original dimensions but did not compress the images or change the file size. Using RSS feeds to keep abreast of news and publications is a totally new concept to many.

It reminds me of the story about a hardware salesman who sold chain saw to a customer who wanted to cut firewood. After a month the customer brought the saw back to the shop and said the new saw made life harder than ever before. The salesman looked at the saw, started it up, and the customer said “What’s that noise?”.

Today I met with the director of the Staff Development Office and we chatted about a series of workshops on practical informatics (I call it guerilla informatics). The plan is to meet with a group of staff educators to brainstorm the need for short, practical modules directed at nurse managers with the goal they will become the champions of the concept who spread it to their staff. I can see modules on using spreadsheets, presentation software and databases to collect, analyze and display information. I can see modules on how to use CINAHL and PubMed effectively as well as other sessions on using electronic tools to collaborate, educate and create personal learning environments that draw on information from multiple sources.

Two sources to gauge informatics competency

Results of aA Delphi Study to Determine Informatics Competencies for Nurses
at Four Levels of Practice
Nancy Staggers, PhD, RN, FAAN
Carole A. Gassert, PhD, RN, FAAN, FACMI
http://www.nurs.utah.edu/informatics/competencies.doc

Nursing Informatics Competencies: Self - Assessment
http://www.nursing-informatics.com/niassess/index.html