Health information manager competency standards and their application to final-year, work-integrated learning...

Area of Science:

• Health Sciences
• Information Management
• Education

Background:

• Professional practice placements, or work-integrated learning (WIL), are crucial for applying health information management (HIM) knowledge and skills.
• These placements align university curricula with entry-level professional competencies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify formal (explicit learning outcomes - ELOs) and informal (derived learning outcomes - DLOs) in final-year HIM WIL proposals at La Trobe University (2012-2021).
• To map these identified outcomes to national HIM profession entry-level competency sub-domains.

Main Methods:

• Documentary analysis of a random sample (20%, n=129) of final-year HIM WIL proposals from 2012-2021.
• Categorization of extracted ELOs and DLOs to the Health Information Management Association of Australia's (2017) HIM Professional Competency Standards.
• Comparison of ELOs and DLOs across competency sub-domains.

Main Results:

• 38% of proposals lacked explicit learning outcomes (ELOs).
• Communication and teamwork were predominant generic skills (Domain A).
• Key profession-specific domains included 'Health information services organisation and management' (Domain I), 'Health information and records management' (Domain B), and 'Research methods' (Domain E).
• ELOs primarily aligned with four discipline-specific domains, while DLOs were spread across five.

Conclusions:

• Recommendations are provided for agency supervisors to enhance the framing of WIL project proposals.
• This research supports the development of more robust WIL experiences to better prepare HIM students for professional practice.