Health informatics: an inter-disciplinary perspective of nursing and information technology practitioners' education

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The current educational programs for health informatics do not sufficiently develop the relevant competencies of health and informatics practitioners to provide a quality healthcare service enabled by digital health. In addition, the complexities of the diverse health and digital health domains due to environmental changes and technological advances place a burden on ever-changing relevant competency needs of the workforce within different contexts. In South Africa there seems to be limited research on the integration of relevant nursing informatics in nursing education aligned to relevant nursing practice as well as health domain knowledge for informatics practitioners. METHODOLOGY: A simple mixed methods design was employed to explore the competency needs of nurse and informatics practitioners. The study was divided into three sections: semi structured questionnaire was employed to explore the attitudes, competency needs and training of Post Basic nurses students; Unstructured interviews for the perspectives of the Nurse Educators and the Informatics Educators on the competency needs and training of the nurse and informatics students respectively; results from the INDEHELA project; and Unstructured questionnaire for the perspectives of Health Informatics Experts on the competency and training needs of Informatics Students. Thematic Analysis was conducted on the results RESULTS: The assessment of attitudes of the nurses indicated that there is a positive attitude towards informatics technology. Students assessed themselves and indicated seven themes of topics that they would like to gain skills. Educators concurred with the topics and indicated that the best form of training would be integrated learning within the core Nursing course. Health Informatics Experts indicated eleven themes of topics of competencies and stated that for the African Context it is best to use African examples or train within an African setting. CONCLUSION: Although nurse have a positive attitude towards informatics technology, there is a need for training of nurse in basic informatics technology. There is a need for training of the nurse educators for them to be able to lecture in Nursing Informatics. A collaborative approach from experts in both disciplines is necessary for the development of the competencies. It is important for informatics practitioners to have domain knowledge of health to effectively collaborate with health practitioners. The skilling of either practitioner results in three Health Informatician roles: A Nurse Informatician with health domain knowledge and some informatics knowledge; A Digital Health Informatician with informatics domain knowledge and some health knowledge and a Health Informatician an expert in both domains of knowledge.