Ebook: Advances in Health Telematics Education

The NIGHTINGALE Project, which started on the 1st of January, 1996, after the approval of the European Commission, and has a 36-month duration is essential in planning and implementation of strategy in Training the Nursing Profession in using and applying healthcare information systems.

The NIGHTINGALE project is contributing towards the appropriate use of the developed Telematics infrastructure across Europe by educating and training nurses in a harmonising way across Europe in the upcoming field of Nursing Informatics. For achieving this objective the NIGHTINGALE project established a series of European Conferences on Health Telematics Education, and Workshops by experts (users, developers, and policymakers).

NIGHTINGALE has already published the Proceedings of the 1^st Year Conferences and Workshops. The book is entitled ‘Health Telematics Education’ vol.1 and is published by IOS Press under the series ‘Studies in Health Technology and Informatics’ [ISBN 90 5199 329 3 (IOS Press), ISBN 4 274 90157 2 C3047 (Ohmsha), ISSN 0926-9630].

In this book the Proceedings of the 2^nd Year Conferences and Workshops are included.

These Conferences and Workshops are:

• The 2^nd European Conference on Health Telematics Education held on 6-8 November 1997, in Lisbon, Portugal.

• The 3^rd Users and Policymakers Group Workshop held on 9-11 May 1997, in Lojt Kirkeby, Denmark.

• The 2^nd Developers and Multimedia Group Workshop held on 30 May - 1 June 1997, in Marathon, Greece.

• The 4^th Users and Policymakers Group Workshop held on 9 November 1997, in Lisbon, Portugal.

I would like to thank all the members of the NIGHTINGALE Consortium for organising the Conference and the Workshops, especially the local Organising Committee of HTE'97: the Chairman of the Conference Dr. Joao Vasco Ribeiro, Dr. Arlete Amaral, Mr. Miguel Angelo Soares, and Mr. Pedro Geirinhas, the Chairman of the Working Group 6 of EFMI Prof. Arie Hasman for co-chairing the HTE'97 Conference and for peer-reviewing the deliverables of the Project, the members of the NIGHTINGALE Users and Developers Groups, the speakers and those who provided effort in producing these proceedings, Dr. Marianna Diomidous, Mr. Petros Dounavis, Miss Emily Karistinou, and Miss Irene Maltezaki. I would like to thank especially Miss Emily Karistinou for her careful compiling the contents of this Volume.

The Editor

Prof. John Mantas

In a global information society all students regardless of discipline need to have or acquire basic computing and information literacy skills. The Faculty of Health Science at the Central Queensland University now includes a compulsory and introductory course in Health Informatics at the undergraduate level for all its first year students to meet these educational needs for the future health industry workforce. This paper describes the teacher and student lived experiences encountered throughout the concurrent use of a variety of delivery modes to teach an introductory unit of health informatics to this varied student population. It will include a discussion about the unit itself, educational philosophy adopted, strengths and weaknesses of the technologies and delivery methods adopted and the results of the student evaluation.

This paper provides an overview of video tele-education distance learning systems that are being used to educate nursing students. These systems are using communication technology to teach courses to nursing students in one or more remote sites. The types of video tele-education systems are described. Also, the educational strategies to be concerned with and the technical requirements to implement a system successfully are presented.

In this contribution several aspects of electronic medical records are discussed. Attention is paid to data entry and data presentation. An example is given of a study, investigating the influence of the granularity with which information is presented on the time it takes to retrieve this information. Finally some implementation problems are discussed.

This communication aims to help demonstrating that nurses education and training, in what information and telecommunications technologies are concerned, is a critical success factor in the achievement of a strategic goal: the “best practice” in nursing. This goal is seen from the formal perspective of the quality of the nursing care process.

Simultaneously, one makes a methodological approach by employing a strategical planning technique in the nursing context.

This paper describes how nursing informatics content will be integrated into the education of Advanced Nursing Practitioners at Masters level. Changes in health care, especially the need to deliver evidence based nursing care and the growing amount of health data, information and knowledge, require well educated Advanced Nurse Practitioners to lead the nursing profession. The nursing informatics content for this level of nursing education is described and compared with national and international curriculum guidelines, including Nightingale work.

This paper presents a small survey made to Finnish “adp-nurses” working at adp-departments or as contact persons and informants at the wards. Their positions, job descriptions and informal education is discussed in relation to recent international development in the field. Finally the necessity of starting formal education for the European informatics nurse is stressed.

In this contribution the problem-based educational system is explained. As an example the system, current in the Faculty of Medicine, is discussed. The appreciation of students of the system is very high, as is apparent from investigations performed by two independent organizations.

The propose of this communication is to describe the present nursing situation in Madeira (RAM) and its potentialities for the utilisation of the Information Technologies and Communications (I.T.C.) in educational and in clinical practice.

RAM has its own Regional Health System and is developing a Health Infonnation System, a Nursing Education System which conglobates a Baccalaureate Nursing School and a Licentiate's degree Nursing School which graduates almost the totality of the nurses who work here in Madeira, a Health Professional Education Department, common to the different organisations and a Regional Nursing Research Group constituted by elements representing the several organisations of health and which has been developing Research Education and dynamize Research Projects in nursing practice.

The Nursing Schools in addition to the Health Organisation, use the Nursing Theoretical Models and the Nursing Process since 1990

Referring to the utilisation of the ITC in Education and in the Clinical Practice, despite the school curricula include informatics subjects, nurse's knowledge and opportunities of utilisation are still too incipient.

Nevertheless, the present reform of the baccalaureate course curriculum as well as the aims and strategies of the Nursing Research Group and training strategies will provide positive changes.

The paper display in a short way the concepts of medical cost and cost - effectiveness analysis and present the educational implications arising from the assessment and the comparison of the Hospital cost of two different therapeutic methods of myocardial revascularization: Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (C.AB.G.) surgery and Percutaneous Transluminal Coronary Angioplasty (P.T.C.A.)

In the paper we mention the trends in medical informatics education and we present the development of medical informatics education in the Czech Republic. The actual situation at Czech faculties giving pregraduate courses covering medical informatics topics is described. The enhanced development of medical informatics education via European cooperation is shown. Finally, new approaches to medical informatics education using Internet and special educational software are mentioned.

The Evolution of Information Technology is rapid. Electronic circuits substitute mental activities and new Technology invades to all aspects of life. Nursing, which is like all the other Health related professions information-intensive, could use the new Technology to be facilitated. The implementation of Informatics to Nursing was supported by the growing information that Nursing has to manage. The definition of Nursing Informatics was put on 1980 and since then a lot attempts to define Nursing Informatics have followed. The applications of Nursing Informatics are focused on four fields of Nursing: Administration of Nursing, Clinical Practice, Education, and Research. The first applications of Nursing Informatics made visible the need for the development of a Unified Language System. The efforts, today, are focused on two fields:

• to establish a standard definition of the terms of or related to Nursing Informatics

• to establish standard definitions and Classification Schemes for the Nursing Phenomena and Practice so that they can be processed by Nursing Informatics

In solving these problems important role plays the study of Linguistics. Another important factor that should be taken into account is the Development of International Standards of general acceptance that enhances communication aspects. Apart from the International Standardisation Organisations, other non-profit organisations have constituted Special Groups that are dealing with the promotion of Nursing Informatics. Final Nursing Informatics should follow the previous attempts of Nursing to establish a Unified Language System. All the steps of the development of the application are described. In particular subjects that are covered are: the scope of the application, the collection of the material, the designing and building up of the Database, the development of a User Interface and the characteristics of the Application.

Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) has made limited inroads into the teaching of nursing. While existing CAL materials are often excellent for supporting conventional teaching programs, they cannot in any way be considered as steps towards providing a free-standing CAL course.

The recently published Dearing Report on the state of higher education in the UK recommends a major shift towards CAL, proposes Open and Distance Learning (ODL) as a means of effective courseware delivery, and encourages British Higher Education Institutions to enter the competitive global marketplace for ODL students; the Dearing recommendations reflect the trend within both the European Union and North America towards CAL and ODL.

This report documents one potential solution to the problem of raising educational standards through capitalising on existing expertise for the development of CAL using hypertext mark-up language, while working within shrinking budgets. It represents a model which is capable of adoption by other Nursing Schools, and is therefore presented with a view to stimulating discussion.

There has been growing interest in the use of video communications in education. This paper will describe how video communications can be used as part of a teaching and learning process linked with other communications technologies to give the student greatest advantage for effective learning to take place. The paper will conclude with a personal view of the teacher preparation required to realise appropriate use of mixed media.

Within this paper the development of a course on Nursing Informatics is presented. The curriculum development process as applied to the course is explained, the structure of the course is outlined and the orientation of the content is presented.

The NIGHTINGALE project, which is an EU financed project, is considered as essential in planning and implementation of strategy in training the nursing profession in using and applying healthcare information systems. Therefore, NIGHTINGALE gives a new perspective in Nursing Informatics Education in Europe. In 1997 some major goals of the NIGHTINGALE project were accomplished. These achievements are described in this document

The paper describes a pilot project of TELONC computer system designed to assist oncology education. At present the system is being implemented and its elements are subject to more detailed preliminary examinations. The system is of module structure and at the present stage of implementation special attention is being paid to patterns for histopathological examinations, information on drugs with aggressive impact on human organism together with suitable instructions on their usage, as well as to certain elements of the training simulator module.

This paper identifies patterns and tendencies in Nursing Informatics as a phenomenon. The methods have been literature reviews, categorizations and interpretations, looking for characteristic patterns and tendencies. 11 Patterns and 2 main tendencies are identified and the results are discussed in according to make some points on the importance and effects of Nursing Informatics to Nursing when one is developing a Nursing Informatics Curriculum.

This paper examines factors that are essential for a successful implementation of healthcare informatics in professional curricula. These factors are related to the design framework of the learning materials that have been developed as a part of a Dutch model curriculum of healthcare informatics. Next some ideas and suggestions for a successful implementation are presented.