Overview of HITS program & request for QSEN competencies

QSEN expands its growth by partnering with the HITS grant.

Overview of HITS program and request for QSEN Competencies

The University of Kansas School of Nursing in collaboration with the Schools of Nursing at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Science Center, and Indiana University Indianapolis, in partnership with the National League for Nursing (NLN)  recently was awarded  a Faculty Development: Integrated Technology into Nursing Education & Practice Initiative grant. This project is a five-year grant provided by The Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA’s) Bureau of Health Professions (BHPr) in partnership with the Office of Health Information Technology (OHIT).  The program is titled HITS: Health Information Technology Scholars Program

Our Purpose

The Health Information Technology Scholars (HITS) project is designed to develop, implement, evaluate, disseminate and sustain a faculty development collaborative (FDC) initiative to integrate information technologies in nursing curriculum and expand the capacity of collegiate schools of nursing to educate students for the 21st century.

Project Goals

  • Transform teaching and learning in the 21st century – Merge informatics, telehealth, simulation and e-learning to create powerful learning environments.
  • Improve Nursing Education and Practice – Develop faculty to integrate IT in curricula to educate future practitioners.
  • Expand Infrastructure for clinical Learning Processes – Educate a cadre of well-informed faculty who focus on real-world applications of technologies in their education practices.
  • Optimize Patient Safety and Drive Improvements in Healthcare Quality – Better educate future workforce with competencies to provide safe, quality and efficient healthcare through use of technologies.

Target Audience

The target audience is faculty from diverse academic settings who are enthusiastic about integrating health information and other technologies in their curriculum to prepare future practitioners with a new skill set. These faculty will advance their leadership skills within and beyond their own institution. They will acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes to educate practitioner to meet the competencies required for improving quality, safety and efficiencies in healthcare. In addition, Scholars will develop a support network for innovative education, receive a certificate of recognition and be awarded continuing education credit for their participation.

 

Request to assess Scholar’s QSEN Competencies

Shortly, we will admit 30 - 50 faculty to participate in the HITS program. The program is a 10 month program that will begin in February 2008.  We had an overwhelming response to the call for Scholars with just over 500 applications for the 30 – 50 slots.  

As stated above, our program is designed to help faculty acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes to educate future practitioner to meet the competencies required for improving quality, safety and efficiencies in healthcare. The HITS curriculum will use QSEN as a framework.

We will be using the QSEN competencies as outlined in the May/June 2007 issue of Nursing Outlook to assess the Scholars abilities to teach to these competencies.  We will use a pre and post program assessment of these competencies to study the impact of the HITS program on the Scholar’s abilities related to enhancing quality and safety in the curriculum.  During module I of the HITS program, Scholars will learn about QSEN and other quality and safety initiatives related to nursing. (TIGER, IOM, Simulation, etc ). This is an interactive learning module to assist Scholars to begin to develop an integrated teaching project that will be implemented at their own institution.  As part of this initial module, Scholars will be asked their perception of each QSEN competency using a five point likert scale.  First they will be asked to assess how important they perceive the competency and then how well they think they are prepared to teach to that competency. They will be asked to complete the survey at the beginning of the Scholars program and at the end.

We will share the results with Dr. Cronenwett and her team.  Also, HIT Scholars will be encourage to post their teaching strategies developed as part of the HITS program on the QSEN website.

For more information about the HITS program visit www.hits-colab.org