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New Jersey Institute Offers RNs Healthcare IT Certification
By Marylisa Kinsley, RN, BSN
Monday June 1, 2009

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The four courses offered in the certificate program include information about clinical applications and decision support tools to improve patient outcomes, with case studies of real-world examples. Among the topics discussed in the course of study —

• All the interrelated roles of various individuals involved in the delivery of healthcare, and how Health Information Technology can affect and improve clinical processes

• IT solutions for a variety of administrative problems: Procurement, information exchange, and analytical tools to support decision-making

• Trends in evidence-based systems, such as ways of building bridges between clinicians and scientists and changing internal practices based on data from electronic medical records and physician order entry systems

• Patient-centered eHealth systems, including the use of Internet and Web applications for telehealth and hospital-sponsored patient portals, patient privacy, system security, and ethical issues associated with these systems

• Best practices in a variety of areas, including IT vendor management, reducing barriers for clinical system adoption, and patient-to-provider communication

For information about the Healthcare IT Management program at Stevens, visit http://howe.stevens.edu/hith. Contact Carol Brown, program director, at carol.brown@stevens.edu or 201-216-5581.

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More than ever, healthcare organizations are turning to technology to solve their problems with everything from patient safety to record keeping. Even President Barack Obama has identified electronic medical records as a priority goal of his first years in office.

For years, nurses have been included in discussions about selection of electronic charting systems. Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., is offering a new IT graduate certificate course for healthcare professionals.

“The understanding gained from this graduate-level program helps professionals avoid pitfalls when choosing and implementing information systems,” says Carol V. Brown, PhD, program director and distinguished professor at Stevens Institute of Technology, Howe School of Technology Management. Brown says barriers can be anticipated and removed before they become problematic. “We talk about best practices and discuss what works and what doesn’t in a realistic way,” she says.

To tailor the program to real-world demands of healthcare professionals, a variety of healthcare leaders, including nurses, participated on the advisory board that helped design the curriculum. The first step was finding a common language.

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Technology Management Certification

Learn about graduate courses in Healthcare Information Technology Management at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., at http://howe.stevens.edu/academics/graduate-programs/certificates/it-in-healthcare/.
Learning the Lingo

“Initially, EMRs were financial systems in ‘sheep’s clothing,’ ” says Linda Reed, RN, MBA, MSN, chief information officer of Atlantic Health System in Morristown, N.J. “To make clinical systems work, we needed to have clinical people involved in the design and implementation. If clinicians don’t understand all the possibilities, they won’t be able to turn available information into knowledge that they can use.”

Each discipline in the Stevens certification program has different entry courses to the four-course program so they can learn the language of each field. For the healthcare professional, information is included on how IT can help improve patient outcomes. Subsequent discussions benefit from this basic understanding, Brown says. “IT terminology can be confusing,” she says. “It helps all professionals when they ‘walk a mile’ in the others’ shoes.”

Reed agrees, saying many healthcare managers are not clear about what technology can do for them. “People in charge of clinical units need to be IT-savvy,” she says. “The way that healthcare IT systems are set up will have an impact on the way they do business within the institution. Understanding how software works will help them make good decisions without relying on what the HIT vendor promises. Promises versus reality can be a hard lesson learned.”

The Nursing Process

“When we start to break down processes to map them out for the IT system, we find that we think in those terms,” says Ellen McAndris, RN, MPA, CNA, professional-clinical services director of Valley Home Care in Paramus, N.J., an affiliate of Valley Health System. “Nurses are familiar with assessment, plan development, intervention, and reassessment. The way that information systems work is similar, but they use different terms. When there is confusion about the details of what systems can do, we are reduced to a more passive role, asking for reports and reviewing data.”

Valley Home Care has an active telemonitoring program, McAndris says. The unit, installed in a patient’s home, is tailored to the individual client’s needs and is preloaded with hundreds of educational modules. McAndris envisions the potential benefits to patients, who are encouraged to use similar programs.

“There is an enormous amount of self-education that can be done at the patient’s own pace and convenience using this type of technology. Nurses can follow up to clarify and assess the effectiveness of the teaching,” she adds.

Put It All Together

Nurses have come into their own as professionals to be reckoned with at the bedside and the boardroom. As such, nurses should have a clear understanding of the technology, the leadership skills required to implement and foster the use of it, and an understanding of the available data to help them make decisions and evaluate results.

“Nursing executives are equal to any other administrator in healthcare,” McAndris says. “They are decision-makers who help set the strategic plans and goals of their organizations. As we all progress in understanding what these information systems can do for our patients, we can expand their use to keep people well and our healthcare system strong.”

Marylisa Kinsley, RN, BSN, is a contributing writer for Nursing Spectrum. To comment, e-mail editorNJ@nursingspectrum.com.

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