Question

Describe the core competency areas for public health informatics?

Answer 1

Ans) The Informatics Core Competency:
1. Emphasizes the importance of healthcare providers' ability to use timely, relevant, and authoritative information that is critical to providing quality patient care.
2. Does not suggest that informatics is intended to replace the judgement or knowledge of healthcare professionals.

IOM core competencies
Implemented by a committee following the Quality Chasm report (Institute of Medicine, 2001) to provide recommendations for an overarching vision for all programs and institutions engaged in the education of health professionals.

Competency 1 components
Provide patient-centered care
1) Patient advocacy
2) Self-management of care, health literacy, patient, and family education
3) Nurse-patient communication and interaction
4) Care coordination: plan of care, critical thinking, clinical reasoning and judgment, delegation
5) Culture, diversity, disparities

Provide patient-centered care
"identify, respect, and care about patients' differences, values, preferences, and expressed needs; relieve pain and suffering; coordinate continuous care; listen to, clearly inform, communicate with, and educate patients; share decision making and management; and continuously advocate disease prevention, wellness, and promotion of healthy lifestyles, including a focus on population health"

Competency 2 components
Work in interdisciplinary teams
1) Communication
2) Collaboration
3) Coordination
4) Delegation
5) Change
6) Conflict resolution
7) Teamwork

Work in interdisciplinary teams
"cooperate, collaborate, communicate, and integrate care in teams to ensure that care is continuous and reliable"

Competency 3 components
Employ evidence-based practice
1) Nursing research
2) EBP and quality improvement
3) Tools for EBP success: clinical guidelines, policies, and procedures
4) EBP and the students
5) Evidence-based practice process models
6) Evidence-based management

Employ evidence-based practice
"integrate best research with clinical expertise and patient values for optimum care, and participate in learning and research activities to the extent feasible"

Competency 4 components
Apply quality improvement
1) Quality in healthcare
2) Patient role in quality improvement
3) Critical tools to improve care (QI)
4) Quality in nursing delivery systems
5) Safety in healthcare

Apply quality improvement
"identify errors and hazards in care; understand and implement basic safety design principles, such as standardization and simplification; continually understand and measure quality of care in terms of structure, process, and outcomes in relation to patient and community needs; design and test interventions to change processes and systems of care, with the objective of improving quality"

Competency 5 components
Utilize informatics
1) Regulations: HIPAA
2) High-tech use high touch
3) Biomedical and patient care equipment
4) Telehealth
5) Informatics and communication
6) Informatics description standards
7) Documentation

Utilize informatics
"communicate, manage knowledge, mitigate error, and support decision making using information technology".