The Settings > Health Care > What its Like...

What its Like...

Health care professionals are connected to so many aspects of everyday life. Here is a list of the varied health care sub-settings:

• academic medical centers and health professions schools,
• government agencies,
• pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and private foundations,
• professional societies and health associations, and
• hospitals, clinics and other care giving institutions(Locatis, 2004).

“The most obvious sub-settings for education and training are the professional schools. Government health agencies, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and clinics train staff internally and often provide training to others” (Locatis, 2004), including consumer health. Specifically, “[c]onsumer health includes general education about wellness, health issues, and specific diseases as well as skills training (e.g., first aid) and patient education” (Locatis, 2004).

Because health care is one field in which errors in learning can literally be a matter of life and death, properly educating health professionals is of utmost importance, which is why medical education programs undergo continuing research and evaluation (Locatis, 2004).

“Some of the most significant factors affecting performance, the development of instruction, and the application of educational technology in health care are knowledge and research, costs and managed care, regulations and standards, and convergence (Locatis, 2004).

“Knowledge advances rapidly in health care. The volume and timeliness of knowledge has made information technology an important ingredient in education and practice (Salas & Brownell, 1997). As the cost of information technology continues to decline, its use becomes more feasible” (Locatis, 2004). “The ubiquity of health information on the internet from varied sources has expanded the knowledge integrity and timeliness problem….It has exacerbated the need to develop standards for health information and guidelines for helping non-professionals judge its quality and appropriateness (Robinson, Patrick, Eng, & Gustafson, 1998). One solution is for doctors to prescribe information sources as well as medicine (Bader & Braude, 1998)” (Locatis, 2004).

Health care is expensive business. “Attempts to curtail rising health care costs, especially with the introduction of managed care, not only affect the delivery of health services, but professional education and training as well” (Locatis, 2004). “Managed care has sparked faculty interest in information technology as a way to lighten the burden of teaching, while others have become interested in its use for patient and consumer health education. Ironically, while many health insurers see information and education as a means to control costs (people knowledgeable about health tend [to] need fewer services), many patients and lay people view it as a way to insure they are receiving appropriate care (Bottles, 1999)” (Locatis, 2004).

Those working with technology addressing performance and instruction in health care collaborate with subject matter experts who are either scientists or practitioners having backgrounds in science, who see teaching as an outgrowth of their efforts to provide care or conduct research, and who are probably less likely than other academics to be ego involved in their teaching” (Locatis, 2004).