Health Care Informatics

     Health Informatics is ... the use of computer technologies in

healthcare to store, share, transmit and analyse clinical knowledge

and data (open clinical, 2011 ). Or put more simply it is the use of

information technology in healthcare ( Thede & Sewell, 2010 ). 

Informatics starts with the process of progressing from the old paper

charting system to elaborate electronic health records such as EPIC.

 It continues on by giving us knowledge at our fingertips which

helps us serve our patients more quickly and more effectively.  You

 have to ask yourself what did they do before being able print 

patient education at the click of a button,

 or research a new medication that isn't in your drug book?  Further,

 with newer technologies, medical studies and statistics can be

delivered right to handheld computers in the from of cell phones.

When did this happen? Over night it seems.

      This week in class I have learned how far behind I am in

 technology.  I am still working out how Twitter is different from

Facebook and how having an online portfolio is any simpler than

writing a resume. I did discover that you can participate in live

interactions on twitter which I did not know about.  I have learned

how to Tweet, and reply to Tweets. I am still working on the rest of

it. I have blogged for years with family pictures, long before the

simpler process of Facebook came around.  I am looking forward to

attempting movie maker and you tube. 

     Word processing is my strongest skill in informatics. This is a

skill you must have to be a college student in 2012.  It is really a

skill that you must have in general.  When accessing all of my

skills, you will find that I repeat myself when I say I have learned

by trial and error.  The last computer class I took was in 1995.

 Things have come a long way, but fortunately word processing is

 one of the programs that hasn't changed much.  I did well on this

assessment and I am not surprised.  It is the one I use the most.
  

    Excel is certainly my weakest link.  I vaguely remember this

part of my last computer class.   I am not sure what I could do with

excel today because it has been so long since I have used it.  I am

not surprised that I didn't know how to do most of the skills

mentioned in this assessment. I know how to make a table with

excel and that is about it.

     Powerpoint has become a system that I am using more often. I

 learned most of powerpoint by trial and error during the course of

nursing school.  It takes me longer than most people to use it

because I am so unfamiliar with the program but in the end I can get

 it done.  I recently learned to put music to a powerpoint and that

was a big accomplishment.

       My basic computer skills have gotten better over the past

few years.  I can no longer rely on my husband to fix problems

when they arise because I am usually working at a strange hour. I

used to call on him for every little thing that came up with the

computer. I now know how to get through the trouble shooting

process on my own and can usually get things up and running

again.  I am not surprised that I still have a lot to learn but again, if I

 have the time to just sit and work on it, I can usually figure things

out. 

     I think my web skills are pretty good.  Before they had blogs

and facebook, I used to have an actual website. I built it from

scratch myself, buying my own domain name even. That was years

 ago and I could probably never do it now.  I do blog and use

facebook as well as using the web for a lot of school assignments.  I

 can navigate around pretty well and have learned how to use the

 web for my educational benefit.  There are some web-based sites

that I find not so user friendly and hard to navigate. One is our

school library, but I always manage to find my way.

   My hope is that this class will help me to refresh some of my

computer skills.  Excel is a big one and I have so much more to

learn about powerpoint as well. I cannot see me taking an additional

computer class to learn this as the programs are written so user

friendly.  A little extra time and perseverance are usually all I need

 to learn a program I am not familiar with. 

     The competency I think is most important in informatics is web

skills. Everything we do today revolves around the internet. It's kind

 of a scary thought but that is the main place we get our

information.  My kids constant refrain is "well, let's look it up on

the internet." They are eight and seven years old.  It is getting

harder and harder to remember the days of pre- world wide

web.  The information we can get at our fingertips now would have

been impossible 20 years ago.

References  

Thede, L., & Sewell, J. (2010). Informatics and Nursing (Third ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Health Informatics. (2011, September 14). In www.openclinical.org. Retrieved March 5, 2012