Evaluation of the outcomes of a multi-professional education programme in health informatics

A multi-professional continuing education programme on healthcare information systems was designed on the basis of the IMIA WG 1 recommendations for teaching health informatics. This paper presents the outcomes of the education programme on the basis of the participants' (n=19) narrative assessments and a questionnaire. According to the results, the participants were very satisfied with their personal learning outcomes and they felt that the programme content was useful for their duties at work. They regarded that particularly the multi-professional group had given them many ideas and rewarding discussions. The learning arrangements were assessed very successful and the learning methods rewarding. In conclusion we suggest that it is important to include different professions--healthcare and technical--into the same continuing education programmes in health informatics, and to include real life-like team projects. The validity of the results to undergraduate education programmes should be studied.