Rita Axford
An exciting development on the education front in nursing informatics is the announcement that HBO & Company has generously extended their Nurse Scholars program to include a Nurse Scholar from Australia. This program is a unique collaboration between corporate business interests and academia designed to create a cohort of computer proficient nurses and help schools of nursing integrate informatics into nursing education.
The goal of the Nurse Scholars Program is to provide nurse educators with the opportunity to learn concepts and methods relating to computerisation of health care information and to share this knowledge with the nursing community - students, academic staff, practitioners and administrators. It is anticipated that the aggregation, diffusion and dissemination of this knowledge will help nurses at all levels function as informed participants in the design, selection, implementation and evaluation of automated information systems.
The individual selected as the HBO & Company Nurse Scholar from Australia will receive a scholarship to enable him or her to attend the Nurse Scholars Program held at corporate headquarters of HBO & Company in Atlanta, Georgia in March, 1994. The Nurse Scholars program consists of four days of intensive classroom study, with evenings seminars and workshops. In addition to lectures and demonstrations, hands-on experiences with both mainframe and minicomputer-based hospital information systems of HBO & Company are included. Part of each day is designated as a 'Journey to the Curriculum' when the day's learning experiences are reviewed and the scholars discuss how their newly acquired knowledge and skills can be shared with their students and nursing colleagues. Specifically, the program targets the following objectives for its Scholars.
The Australian Nursing Informatics Council (ANIC) is serving as the intermediate body between HBO & Company and the Australian nursing academic community in disseminating information about this program, inviting applicants and selecting the Scholar. A call for applicants has already gone out to all Heads of Schools throughout Australia with a closing date of 15 November 1993 for consideration in the 1994 program. The individual selected as the HBO & Company Nurse Scholar from Australia will disseminate his or her learning upon returning home, so we can expect a future article in Informatics in Healthcare Australia about current thinking and future developments in this area.
The first Scholars program was held in 1989. Approximately twenty-five faculty and nine scholars from various regions of the U.S. participated in what was deemed to be a highly successful program.
More details about the program can be found in a 1992 article entitled 'HealthQuest/HBO Nurse Scholars Program: A Corporate Partnership with Nursing Education' by Diane Skiba, Roy Simpson and Judith Ronald and published in Computer Application in Nursing Education and Practice edited by Jean Arnold and Gayle Pearson (National League for Nursing Publication. No. 14-2406).
In recent years, Scholars from the U.K. and Canada have added international breadth to the program. Next year we anticipate representation from 'down under' thanks to HBO & Company and the efforts of Mr. Roy Simpson, their Executive Director for Nursing Affairs and members of the Australian Nursing Informatics Council.
