In the news

Joint health record for DoD and the VA:
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/obama-announces-new-joint-health-record-dod-va

An interesting article about the demand for clinicians with informatics experience:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/jobs/12starts.html

Education

Right now, I'm contemplating several online master's degree programs, particularly an informatics degree. It can be a chore, since there are lots and lots of programs out there right now, called health care informatics, nursing informatics and medical informatics.

If you're a nurse and want to be board certified in informatics by the ANCC, you need the following:

• Hold a current, active RN license within a state or territory of the United States or the professional, legally recognized equivalent in another country
• Have practiced the equivalent of two years full time as a registered nurse
• Hold a baccalaureate or higher degree in nursing or a baccalaureate degree in a relevant field
• Have completed 30 hours of continuing education in informatics within the last three years and meet one of the following practice requirements:
• Have a practiced minimum of 2,000 hours in informatics nursing within the last three years
• Have practiced a minimum of 1,000 hours in informatics nursing in the last three years and completed a minimum of 12 semester hours of academic credit in informatics courses which are a part of a graduate level informatics nursing program
• Have completed a graduate program in nursing informatics containing a minimum of 200 hours of faculty supervised practicum in informatics

For more information on education in nursing informatics, check out ANIA's Education page (American Nursing Informatics Association).

Informatics in the news

While it's not the most earth-shattering article out there, my local paper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which addresses business healthcare issues on Wednesdays, has an article about the growing field of informatics in healthcare.

And in the better late than never section...I forgot to mention this recent article which talks about AHLTA and VistA (Armed forces and VA computer systems) from Heathcare IT News.

SINI starts tomorrow

SINI (aka Summer Institute in Nursing Informatics) starts tomorrow at the University of Maryland. The hi-blogs.info group will have coveritlive sessions during the conference.

If you're even remotely interested in informatics, be sure to check it out.

Never assume...

That was my lesson this week. I work with a lot of very experienced nurses who know a lot of things. I found out this week that many of them do not know how to use many of the office automation tools we have access to on our computers.

Case in point, one nurse needed help dealing with attachments in Outlook. Another needed information on how to open attached PDFs and fill them out. Still another needed help troubleshooting what was going wrong with her e-mail.

We have an assigned support person (who, incidentally has another job besides user support) but she's on vacation. As a result, yours truly got to be the support tech on the floor. I don't mind it at all, but it does show how technology skills are being thought of as natural requirements, especially for new nurses, most of whom, have worked with technology during their entire nursing school experience. Happily, our hospital system is recognizing the need for additional computer training for both nurses and ancillary staff and is making it available to those who wish to utilize it.

Here are a few articles of note on this subject.

A new definition for nursing informatics (from AdvanceWEB)
This editorial describes the field of nursing informatics.

This article, The impact of information technology on nursing practice and knowledge by Melanie Anne Cox was featured in a book called Consumer-Centered Computer-Supported Healthcare for Healthy People.