Giving I.T. the Old College Try
MEDITECH and Northeastern University join forces to introduce I.T. to health sciences students, inspiring a tech-savvy new generation of clinical leaders.
(5/5/2010)
MEDITECH recently headed back to school, by joining forces with Northeastern University's Bouvé College of Health Sciences on a project to introduce health care information technology into the department curriculum. In March, a pilot group of nursing students began using our Patient Care System (PCS) during the laboratory simulation portion of their training.
"Educating our students in health informatics is essential and a top priority at Bouvé. Information systems are rapidly becoming the norm in hospitals across the country, so it is important that our students become familiar with these tools early in their careers," says Bouvé College Dean Steve Zoloth. "Incorporating I.T. into the curriculum has long been a goal of ours. Bouvé is one of the first health colleges in the nation to have a fully integrated system for its students, and we are extremely grateful to MEDITECH for helping us to make it happen."
Brenda Douglas, MS, RN, clinical instructor and nursing skills laboratory coordinator, lent her expertise in spearheading the MEDITECH system launch at Northeastern. She believes using I.T. to supplement classroom learning provides her nursing students with 'on-the-job' practical skills, which will serve them well as they move forward.
"Our students are getting valuable hands-on experience, seeing how PCS provides nurses with a patient's medical history, medications, symptoms, test results, access to medical journals, and research tools," she says. "This project gives them a working knowledge of advanced clinical systems, before they even enter a real clinical setting. And, they're creating good documenting habits that will put them ahead of the game after graduation."
Hoda Sayed-Friel, vice president of marketing at MEDITECH and a Northeastern alumna herself, agrees that by introducing nursing students to information technologies during their course of study, they will likely avoid many 'culture change' transition issues once they enter health care practice. "If the next wave of health care providers and decision makers already consider advanced clinical systems to be a routine part of care delivery, adapting to future technology advancements will become second nature," she says.
The program is expected to be implemented in all of Northeastern's health science disciplines before 2011. "Everyone at both Northeastern and MEDITECH did a wonderful job in getting this program running," says Sayed-Friel. "This was a labor of love on both sides, and we're all very proud of the role we're playing to prepare the next generation of care providers and health care technology leaders."Click on any photo below to begin slideshow
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