Search

Nurses use electronic information systems daily, and digital devices have been developed to enable patient to live at home as long as possible. This study aimed to test reverse mentoring for professionals working with digital tools in home care. An electronic survey was sent twice to nurses to collect their opinions about the tools they use. Based on the results from the first survey (N=184), the mentoring content focused on the use of information systems and digital tools. Respondents' experiences as information system users were more abundant than their experiences as digital tool users. Tools supporting independent living were seldom used, but safety devices and alarm monitoring were used daily. The mentoring meetings induced changes and encouraged participants to acquire skills related to the use of digital tools and to evaluate their work critically.

Licensed practical nurses (LPNs) are the second largest occupational group and the largest group in the social and healthcare sector in Finland, and they have an extensive working environment. Like other health and social care professionals, LPNs also use health information systems (HIS) and client information systems (CIS) in their daily work. The aim of this study was to describe LPNs' perceptions of the benefits of information systems in daily patient care. The information systems include the main HIS or CIS that the respondents mainly use in their work. The data comprised 3 866 LPNs' responses were collected via an online survey in 2022. Most of the LPNs work in social care using the Lifecare system. ESKO is used in public health care and was rated as the most popular system that LPNs use regarding the benefits of information systems. Highly experienced LPNs seem to rate the benefits of information systems higher than LPNs who have just started working.

The aim of this European interprofessional Health Informatics (HI) Summer School was (i) to make advanced healthcare students familiar with what HI can offer in terms of knowledge development for patient care and (ii) to give them an idea about the underlying technical and legal mechanisms. According to the students' evaluation, interprofessional education was very well received, problem-based learning focussing on cases was rated positively and the learning goals were met. However, it was criticised that the online material provided was rather detailed and comprehensive and could have been a bit overcharging for beginners. These drawbacks were obviously compensated by the positive experience of working in international and interprofessional groups and a generally welcoming environment.

This chapter describes the milestones and outcomes of Health and Human Services Informatics (HHSI) education programmes at master and doctoral degree level. In Finland, since the year 2000 the programmes have been based on the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) recommendations on biomedical and health informatics and the master's degree programme has been twice accredited by the IMIA Accreditation Committee. The paradigm created to advance and support both education and research in the health and human services fields is used to analyse and synthesize the research focuses of students' theses and evaluate milestones. The outcomes of HHSI programmes are described using quantitative and qualitative data from a student administrative database and student theses. The research focuses and research methods were coded for master's and doctoral theses based on the HHSI paradigm. Experiences from the accreditations and feedback are summarized to provide insights for future development. Based on the results, recommendations for further development of the programmes are provided.

In Finland, the nationally unified and standardized nursing documentation model comprises the nursing process model and the Finnish Care Classification (FinCC). The aim of the study was to assess how well the further developed FinCC complies with actual nursing practices and how pragmatic and understandable it is. An e-questionnaire based on the revised version of the FinCC was sent to healthcare organizations (n=34) and Universities of Applied Sciences (n=14). Data was gathered and organized in Excel. Narrative comments were read and analyzed. The mean of questions of 17 components of both the FICND and the FICNI was over four (scale 1-5). The biggest revision of the FinCC is that different scales and evidence-based research have been utilized in the development of the terminology. Based on the findings, revisions have been made, and the new version, FinCC 4.0, will be published at the end of 2019.

Pain management, assessment and documentation is a crucial part of patient care. However, several studies show flaws in pain management processes. Documentation is not unified or even sufficient. The aim of this study was to describe how patient pain management has been recorded using the nursing diagnoses and nursing interventions of a standardized terminology, the Finnish Care Classification, (FinCC), and how that terminology should be further developed. The research data consisted of the daily nursing documentation notes of patient care episodes (n=806) during inpatient days (n=2564) at several specialty units (n=9). The documentation of pain management was found inadequate and insufficient. The results support the development of a new component, Pain management, and its attendant categories in the new version, FinCC 4.0, to help nurses document pain management in their daily work.

Digital services are growing in the health-care field. The population in Europe is aging, and digital services are on the rise. There are also plenty of new health-care devices on the market. The aim of this study was to survey how elderly people cope with digital services or devices, especially if they are chronically ill. This quantitative study focuses on the impact of chronic diseases on the use of health technology and digital services. The target group of this study is Finnish people aged 65 or over. Based on the results, a chronic disease or disability is not an obstacle to the use of digital services or health-care technology in the Finnish elderly population. The main obstacles to the use of health technology or digital services are complexity, obscure text, or small font size. According to this study, elderly people seem to trust the device or application. Devices, applications, and online services should be designed so that elderly people's diseases or ability to function are considered.

Inadequate, missing or incorrect patient information is usually related to poor documentation. It has several negative effects on patient care processes, and, thus to quality of care, care continuity, and patient safety. It is one of the causes of patient claims. The aim of this study was to analyze patient safety reports and to find out which documentation hazards are damaging to patient safety. Data consisted of the patient incident reports (n=82 353) from seven health and social care areas from 2007-2016 in Finland. A descriptive analysis was conducted to explore the type of service provider and incidents reporting risks in patient data management and documentation. Adverse events due to patient data management and documentation were unusual; however, 18 cases were documented where patients suffered serious harm. Nearly half of the reports resulted from inadequate, missing or incorrect information. Uniform structures, documentation, and service processes need to be developed.

The purpose of this study was to assess the project management of a national health information technology project focused on developing digital health care services. An e-questionnaire was sent at the end of the development project, and 93 experts (18%) from five university hospitals responded. The questionnaire was based on the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) to identify management success and also to get an overview of the project's performance. The questionnaire contained 11 background variables and 17 Likert scale items in five themes on leadership, strategy and planning, people, partnerships and resources, and processes, and one open-ended question. After analysis using descriptive statistical methods, the results showed that, overall, participants felt confident about management of the project. Criticism focused on the distribution of resources and lack of knowledge about the status of development activities in other hospitals. The CAF enablers criteria revealed subjects for further development.

Patient data privacy is emphasized due to increase in electronic health data processing. This paper highlights the importance of data privacy in healthcare and its connection to the European Union's (EU) General Data Protection Regulation, which aims to protect all EU citizens from privacy and data violations. The clinical environment is prone to hazards in information management, especially in care coordination, the management of patient data, and verbal communication. The Swiss cheese model was used to discuss the importance of patient data privacy based on statistics from a national patient safety incident registry. Patient identification proved an important factor leading to hazards that can cause severe harm to patients.

This study describes the knowledge, skills and competencies found in bachelor's degree curricula for health and social care, engineering and business. The International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) biomedicine and health information (BMHI) management recommendations was used as a framework to analyse bachelor's degree curricula (n=14). The results showed that the curricula contained a variety of subjects related to competencies in the IMIA's BMHI. The information technology (IT) engineering curriculum included the highest number of competencies and the business curricula the fewest. The nursing curricula included more competencies than any other health care curricula. When educating students in various professions, their diverse backgrounds and expertise must be considered. As future eHealth developers, students will learn to work as multidisciplinary teams.

The study aimed to identify websites with dementia-related content and evaluate their readability and accessibility. A purposeful sample of 300 websites, which provided information on dementia, were identified from searches using the Google, Yahoo and Bing search engines. Two generic evaluation tools based on WCAG2.0 were used to assess the accessibility of information on dementia and two readability tests (Flesh-Kincaid Grade level and SMOG) were used to evaluate the websites. Only 94 websites have a HON certificate (31.3%), while 38 of the finally selected websites have an average of 56.89 and 32 problems in relation to the Axe and Achecker tools respectively. The most common problems (for images on 19 and 17 of the websites respectively) were related to text resize and the lack of text explanation, and an insufficient color contrast was found on 35 websites. The readability score was 8.2 (FKG) and 7.4 (SMOG) on average, which meant that the sites in question were not recommendable for the general population.

Education in Health Informatics (HI) has been a key priority to guarantee knowledge and skills for professionals working in healthcare settings. One of the early academic models to teach HI are the recommendations provided by the International Medical Informatics Association. The paper describes the curriculum developed for master's degrees and the status of a paradigm used in informatics education, as well as research in the health and human services fields. The aim is to synthesise the methodological focuses in students' theses and discuss the future needs for development. The paradigm guides informatics research. The research focuses, questions and applied research methods were coded for 152 master's degree theses. Based on the results, the most often used method was qualitative. The most frequent research area was steering and organising of information management in work processes. The results guide teachers in supervising the theses of the Health and Human Services Informatics (HHSI) programme and tutoring new students.

Patients and citizens are experienced in Internet use. Earlier studies have suggest that citizens' interest in electronic healthcare services has increased, and there is a need of healthcare professionals to inform patients and their families about this new format and provide them with guidance. The purpose of this study was to find out how patients accept electronic healthcare services and determine their intention to use them based on their opinions of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. A survey (N=150) was carried out at a university hospital before electronic services (e-service) were implemented. Participants were motivated to monitor their wellness based on their previous experiences of using electronic services. Patients were confident about the effectiveness of e-service provision.

This study presents the current status of a paradigm used in informatics education and research in the health and human services fields. The aim is to synthesize the research focuses of students' theses and evaluate the current situation. The paradigm models informatics research. The research focus, questions and applied research methods were coded for 144 Master's degree theses. Based on the results, the theses could easily be coded for the paradigm concepts and research focuses. The most often used concept was data, which was connected to steering and organizing information management in work processes.

The rapid growth of digital health and welfare services demands new competences for health and social care, information technology, and business professionals. This study aims to describe the competences that students have before their studies and those they expect to gain from the study module "Developing Digital Health and Welfare Services" in multiprofessional groups during their bachelor studies. This study reports open-ended questions about students' knowledge concerning digital health prior to the study units. The results, analyzed by QSR NVivo 10 for Windows, show that students are keen to learn about developing digital health and welfare services, and they see that multiprofessional work requires a communicative environment and respect for every profession. Students also believe that they have competences to bring to the multiprofessional group. A successful multidisciplinary development of digital health and welfare services requires changes and cooperation in education between various professions.

Nursing informatics competencies are fundamental to nursing practice in all areas of nursing work, including direct patient care, administration and education. The recent activity relating to the development of nursing informatics competencies for beginning level nurses has exposed a paucity of understanding of the requirements for nursing informatics competencies for nurse educators. So, whilst the challenge of educating faculty to teach informatics has been limited, research into such competencies is required to meet this challenge. This paper describes the challenges and issues associated with nursing informatics competency development for faculty, outlines the capabilities of faculty, and presents a vision for the future of informatics education for faculty. The final requirement of the introduction of new competencies is to determine appropriate evaluation measures that reflect the requirements of all stakeholders.

A trigger is a powerful tool for identifying adverse events to measure the level of any kind of harm caused in patient care. Studies with epilepsy patients have illustrated that using triggers as a methodology with data mining may increase patient well-being. The purpose of this study is to test the functionality and validity of the previously defined triggers to describe the status of epilepsy patient's well-being. In both medical and nursing data, the triggers described patients' well-being comprehensively. The narratives showed that there was overlapping in triggers. The preliminary results of triggers encourage us to develop some reminders to the documentation of epilepsy patient well-being. These provide healthcare professionals with further and more detailed information when necessary.

The purpose of this panel is to discuss milestones and experiences of a standardized nursing terminology for the documentation of nursing practice using Clinical Care Classification as an example. The aim is to describe the value of using the CCC as the standardized nursing terminology and framework for the multidisciplinary care plans and how its interoperability with SNOMED CT, LOINC, and other required terminologies can be used for the electronic health record systems. Further the aim is to discuss the advantages a multidisciplinary documentation system and how it impacts on nursing practice, management, and research as well as highlight the monitoring of nursing documentation. The target audience will enrich their understanding about the possibilities that a standardized multidisciplinary documentation is critical for future data analyses and datamining highlighting nursing practices.

Growing use of information and communication technology (ICT) demands have caused a need for nursing to strengthen the knowledge, skills and competences related to ICT in health (eHealth) and define its versatile roles. The Finnish Nurses Association (FNA) named a group of eHealth experts from various professional fields that are closely connected to nursing e.g. nursing practice, higher education, nursing research and administration. The main purpose was to describe nurses' contribution to the national strategy concerning eHealth development and implementation in health and social care. The group searched for answers, discussed strategic issues, wrote drafts, and sent texts for open commentary circles. The chosen themes of the eHealth strategies deal with the role of the client, nursing practice, ethical aspects education and eHealth competences, nursing leadership, knowledge management and research and development. The article describes the strategic work and the structure of eHealth strategy of nurses in Finland.

Epilepsies are neurological disorders with many different etiologies, symptoms and prognoses. Care for epilepsy patients should be uniform, homogeneous and optimized to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations or even worse outcomes. FinCC-based structured nursing documentation facilitates analyzing patient profiles and populations, developing care processes, nursing documentation, decision-making, and data reuse. This research aimed to determine the potential for finding possible risks for epilepsy patients' health and well-being from the structured nursing data with defined triggers for epilepsy patients. The research data included structured documentation of nursing diagnoses of and interventions for adult epilepsy patients (n = 100) at one neurological ward in a university hospital in 2009-2013. The results showed that nurses documented abundantly, and all triggers were mostly found. The study results will be reviewed by the neurological ward nurses to assess the FinCC and highlight the importance of documentation.

By analyzing medical records, we developed triggers for epilepsy patients' care coordination. Thirteen triggers with potential to affect patient care outcomes and safety were found.

The structure of the Finnish nursing documentation model is based on the decision-making process and a standardized nursing terminology: Finnish Care Classification (FinCC). Nearly 20,000 nurses use the FinCC although not all healthcare organizations utilize it. Development projects for the common national nursing documentation framework have been carried out, for example, in 2010-2011 the aim of a project by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and the National Institute of Health and Welfare was to suggest recommendations for the Finnish nursing documentation model. The final report of the project was sent to different organizations all over the country for further feedback statements. The aim of this paper is to summarize the message of the statements (n=37) from primary and specialized care, universities including universities of applied science, professional nursing associations, trade unions and national authorities. Development suggestions for the FinCC and electronic health records will be introduced.

The purpose of this literature review is to find out how incidents related to unintended consequences in caring processes are reported by patients or their families, and the status of patient reporting systems globally. The focus of the study is on patient self-reporting systems, and patient centrism. For that purpose, this scoping review examines studies that summarize the current position of patient self-reporting in health care. Scopus, PubMed including MEDLINE, and Cochrane retrievals, and hand search revealed in 50 articles for further analysis. The results showed that patient-reported incidents are still ifrequently researched. Patient reporting systems were implemented to some extent, but not worldwide in spite of the existence of several report systems. More research is obviously needed, especially within organizations where patient self-reporting systems are in use.

The aim of this literature review was to discover what the effects are of the standardized nursing documentation. The material used for conducting was drawn from CINAHL, PubMed and Cochrane databases. The search was confined to relevant electronically retrievable studies with links to full text and published in the English language in 2007-2008. These criteria yielded 19 studies. The results indicate that there are mainly positive effects when using nursing terminologies in documenting patient care.