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Nursing 774

NURS 774
Health Care Informatics

1. Catalog Entry

NURS 774
Health Care Informatics

Prerequisites: Graduate standing and completion of DNP technology orientation

Credit hours (3)

This is an introduction of health care informatics for health care practitioners. It is a project based course that emphasizes the requirements of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing Education Requirements for Advance Practice Nurses in Doctoral Programs. These requirements emphasize the analysis and assessment of health care informatics tools in clinical practice, research, education, and patient education.

2. Detailed Description of Course

According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing Education, see below, Advanced Practice Nurses should have instruction in health care informatics. This course was developed to cover the details of these concepts that are not included in other courses.
The basis of the course is assessment and analysis of health care informatics tools used in clinical practice, research, teaching, and patient education. To this aim students are asked to engage with many tools, some new and some familiar to them, assess them, and make reports as they would to a CEO as to the usefulness to their practice. It is a project based course, involving several projects, group or individual, that accomplish the above goals. A longer presentation at the end of the course prepares the student to make oral presentations on health care informatics.

• Design, select, use, and evaluate programs that evaluate and monitor outcomes of care, care systems, and quality improvement including consumer use of health care information systems
• Analyze and communicate critical elements necessary to the selection, use and evaluation of health care information systems and patient care technology
• Demonstrate the conceptual ability and technical skills to develop and execute an evaluation plan involving data extraction from practice information systems and databases
• Provide leadership in the evaluation and resolution of ethical and legal issues within healthcare systems relating to the use of information, information technology, communication networks, and patient care technology
• Evaluate consumer health information sources for accuracy, timeliness, and appropriateness

(Excerpted from “The Essentials of Doctoral Education for Advanced Nursing Practice” as published by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing Education)

3. Detailed Description of Conduct of Course

This course is online primarily using asynchronous tools with many outside observation and activities to demonstrate understanding of course materials. These include:
• Survey of health care informatics tools in a specific clinical setting. Students do field trips in their clinical settings
• Understanding of Design in technology by redesigning common Health informatics tool in clinical usages. Students do this online with imagery, definitions of controls, and flow charts
• Structured postings discussing knowledge of topics such as ethics, policy implications, and design theory. Online postings in small groups demonstrating critical thinking and analysis
• Interviewing other users of this technology including potentially CIO. Field trip to visit and interview the informatics specialists in their clinical settings
• Analyzing online health resources for accuracy and completeness. Analysis and critiques of common online patient resources.
• Analysis and evaluation of the adequacy of health care informatics in their clinical setting. This is an academic paper summary of survey, interviews and understanding of assessment models and design theory
• Analyzing tools for different health care informatics needs such as teaching, research, and bedside practice. Students learn to use and abuse online digital tools such as refworks, practice fusion, and second life so that they will learn the limitations of a varied assortment of digital tools
• Analyzing Social media for usefulness to clinical care of patients. Students participate in social media to get an understanding of what is helpful for their patients
• Final report to class as if making report to CEO and CIO of clinical setting recommending specific changes in health care informatics. Experience with formal personation of evaluation report using Adobe Connect for interactive video software

4. Goals and Objectives of the Course

Successful students in this course will:
• Be able to conserve with CIOs and CEOs as well as other health care professionals concerning health care informatics usage and needs
• Be able to analyze and evaluate clinical situations where health care informatics is in use by using interviews, observations, and assessment models
• Be conversant in design theory so that the student will be able to detect both good and bad design of health care informatics tools and be able to make suggestions for change in design
• Be able to analyze and convey to patients usefulness of online and social media tools for health care improvement and management of chronic disease
• Be able to collaborate on the implementation of new health care informatics tools in clinical settings

5. Assessment Measures

Assessment measures will includes analysis of structured postings, interviews of users, reports on clinical settings, redesign of health care informatics tools, paper, and final oral report to class.

6. Other Course Information

None

Review and Approval
March 17, 2014