Community perspectives on the use of electronic health data to support reflective practice by health professionals

Electronic health records and other clinical information systems have crucial roles in health service delivery and are often utilised for patient care as well as health promotion and research. Government agencies and healthcare bodies are gradually shifting the focus on how these data systems can be harnessed for secondary uses such as reflective practice, professional learning and continuing professional development. Whilst there has been a presence in research around the attitudes of health professionals in employing clinical information systems to support their reflective practice, there has been very little research into consumer attitudes towards these data systems and how they would like to interact with such structures. The study described in this article aimed to address this gap in the literature by exploring community perspectives on the secondary use of Electronic Health Data for health professional learning and practice reflection.

A qualitative methodology was used, with data being collected via semi-structured interviews. Interviews were conducted via phone and audio recordings, before being transcribed into text for analysis. Reflective thematic analysis was undertaken to analyse the data.

Fifteen Australians consented to participate in an interview. Analysis of interview data generated five themes: (1) Knowledge about health professional registration and professional learning; (2) Secondary uses of Electronic Health Data; (3) Factors that enable the use of Electronic Health Data for health professional learning; (4) Challenges using Electronic Health Data for health professional learning and (5) Expectations around consent to use Electronic Health Data for health professional learning.

Australians are generally supportive of health professionals using Electronic Health Data to support reflective practice and learning but identify several challenges for data being used in this way.