Effects of HIT on Healthcare Education

Technology is rapidly changing the way students learn. In a recent study it was found that the average college graduate spends less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games. Not only is HIT and technology in general shaping the future of businesses but it is also having a profound impact on the learning styles of future students. With this we are seeing a divide of people who have grown up with technology (Digital Natives) and those who are migrating into understanding technology (Digital Immigrants). This divide is forcing us to re-evaluate teaching strategies that Digital Immigrants have always known and come up with new innovative ways to better educate these Digital Natives.

The second interesting fact I found surprising was the amount of technologies that are becoming available for education on HIT and the funding that is available. Some of the technologies available are low/high fidelity, serious games, virtual reality, social media tools, and educational EHRs. However, with these tools come costs and many schools cannot afford to implement such systems for education. There is though many new grants that are becoming available such as HITs designed by the National League for Nursing (NLN) that offer funding for schools who have innovative ideas for successfully integrating such technologies into their programs.

Overall, healthcare education is not something that can be overlooked with the rapid evolution of HIT. With so many tools and new methods of funding available, a good first step to successfully improve patient safety, quality of care, and efficiency of healthcare is to effectively educate our future healthcare providers.
 

Re: Effects of HIT on Healthcare Education
Jun 20, 2012 12:15 AM

I must admit that I am one of those graduate students who plays a lot of video games. It is always appealing seeing just how far technology continues to push the limits towards reality. As funny as it sounds, it is quite therapeutic in getting me away from the stresses of life and late college nights. Now of course, I had to cut that habit down drastically in order to focus on my education.

As for learning styles, I believe that time will filter out what you consider the Digital Immigrants up to the point where the majority of Digitial Natives dominate. I do not think there need to be a re-evaluation of teaching strategies regarding technology. This is why having prerequisite courses are important. They help establish a foundation of technologies that are built upon through progress and advancement.

I think that healthcare education will become more popular with time, and our HIT course module is an example of such. One constant challenge with education (in general) is that there is so much funding (grants, scholarships, internships) available to support, but too many students are not aware that these options exist…and if so, then where? I think healthcare education should be considered, but I would suggest that course subjects such as organizational management or IT security become course prerequisites due to the overlap of some content.

Re: Effects of HIT on Healthcare Education
Jun 20, 2012 6:45 PM

I disagree. I think the point about the way Digital Immigrants learn vs Digital Natives is perfectly valid. In some fields such as IT, there may not be as much of a disconnect between those who grew up with it and those that didn't because both sets are continually adapting to new innovations as they come out. But in fields such as healthcare where many of the clinicians interact with IT changes on a less frequent basis, there is more likely to be a learning curve especially for those who didn't grow up with it. Age is not the only factor here though. Many older people have adopted strong IT skills to facilitate their hobbies. These people will gradually become more like Digital Natives. For educational purposes, I think it is important to look at the target audience based on both their background and use of technology in daily life to assess how they might learn best. Both sets can learn from the other's ways of doing things as well as innovative uses of teaching with IT.

Re: Effects of HIT on Healthcare Education
Jun 20, 2012 8:15 PM

I've heard some arguments over the past couple of years about Digital Natives and one of the things that bother me a little bit about it is a general assumption that people seem to take from it. Digital Natives grew up with technology, they've had phones, computers, internet, xBox, etc. their whole lives. They are integrated with technology. That means that they are better able to interact with technology and that they have a better understanding of it; therefore, we can assume that the technology itself is no barrier to Digital Natives.

I know that it is an over-simplification of that point but it seems to be what people talk about most with much relish. I disagree. Mostly with anecdotal evidence but reviewing some of the literature there are a number of people pushing back on the idea. The use of technology is more widespread but the understanding if it is less.

One of the common misconceptions that a large portion of students make is that what you see displayed on your monitor is exactly how another monitor will display it. If you go with them to Wal-Mart and look at LCD TV, most of them will be able to tell which has the best image on it and which is the worst (putting aside any issues of tweaking displays to sell the high end ones). So while they can easily see and explain how one LCD TV looks better than another, they can't extrapolate that information to a computer LCD monitor. Then they print out the images and the black colors aren't a true black. I ask the question, well did you make the color black (RGB: 0-0-0)? They have all learned about colors, they’ve had to mix paints to create images long before they learned to use Photoshop to design an image and their response is "well it looked black so I don’t understand why it didn’t print that way". It is a somewhat specialized thing and calibrating screens to colors, and printers to colors can be much more difficult, but the basic idea that colors are combined to create other colors doesn’t see to hold true in the digital world. I like to think of the following example (and I hope people can comment if it’s not correct).

Automobile natives. Let's take the average American. Most people in America were born after the advent of the automobile. Most of them have ridden in cars. Many have driven a car and have been licensed to do so. The history of the United States through the 20th century was greatly impacted by the car; Route 66, muscle cars, garages, drive-in's, and drive-thrus are all examples of how our culture adapted to the automobile. I'd say that everyone born in the United States today is an Automobile native. Now, that being said think about how we approach cars today. How many of us wash the car every weekend? It keeps the car clean and the paint in good shape and makes the finish last longer. How many of us actually change the oil every 3000 miles (or at whatever level they say) or every 3 months? How many of us change the oil ourselves? How about the filters? Belts? Brake pads? Spark plugs?

Now there are a lot of reasons in the development of cars such as computers and hybrids and so on but the fact remains that most people would rather take the car to the shop and have someone fix it and probably can't answer the month of the last oil change. It's not a bad thing and in many cases its best to let the professionals handle these things.

The point is that we don't have a deeper understanding of the automobile than previous generations because we were born with them. We have changed the way we teach about cars; no more shop class working on motors but I'd say it has less to do with the cars themselves than a shift in our culture and an increase in disposable income. The challenge with Digital Natives is to engage them in ways that will keep their interest with so many distractions but I dare say that that has always been the case.