Question

Marie earned her bachelor’s degree in HIM. After working intraditional HIM roles for a few years, she decided that she wanted tobe involved in the selection and implementation of the EHR andother healthcare information systems. Marie went back to school andearned her master’s degree in health informatics. After graduation,Marie worked for an information system vendor for several years.She decided to take another turn in her career path and become aprofessor in an accredited HIM program. She took a position as afaculty member in a bachelor’s-level HIM program. Marie nowteaches the information system courses for the HIM program and isable to give the students real world examples from her experience inthe traditional HIM departments and the information system vendor.Marie enjoyed her position so much that after teaching for a while,Marie went back to school again to earn her doctorate degree inadult education.

1. Identify how this Real-World Case ties to this chapter.

2. In the Real-World Case, Marie earned a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a doctoral degree. Do you think that some or all of the new roles discussed in this chapter will require graduate education? Why or why not? How do these roles tie into HIM Reimagined?

Answer 1

Real-world case studies are important to complement the academic skills and knowledge acquired by students. In this paper we relate our experiences with a course specifically designed to address this issue. The problem to be addressed is the replacement of a Hospital Information System (HIS) in a large regional hospital. The case mimics as close as possible the project as it really took place. The objectives of the course are threefold: to train management and communication skills, to integrate and apply knowledge gained at different previous courses, and to learn by experience the difference between a real-world problem and a textbook problem. Students’ evaluations show that the objectives of the course are met and that it is regarded as very useful. We found that the three objectives mutually reinforce each other, which is a decisive factor for the success of the course.

Ans2 We are convinced that this project is very useful indeed, although it is hard to quantify itsvalue. The students get a first experience of the nature of a real-world IT problem and learn toapply academic skills and team skills in a nontrivial case study. Moreover, what has beenlearned here is followed up in other project-based courses. In the following years, there areseveral larger projects, in which students are expected to work in professional teams. The BITintegration project has been subject to the faculty’s formal evaluation procedure several times.Such evaluations are based on students’ assessments of whether the objectives of the coursehave been reached and are geared towards issues that can be improved. Invariably it comes outthat the objectives are reached and that the course is among the ones most liked by thestudents. To be fair, it has to be remarked that the faculty’s evaluation procedure does notvalidate whether the objects of a course are the proper ones – but for the integration projectthere is little reason to worry – and whether the students have truly acquired the skills theythink they have acquired.The students’ impression is that the case study is very realistic. Further evidence that this isso comes from the experts on the panel in the final session. They assess the quality of the bestfour teams’ results (two for every assignment) from the context of the real project. This showsthat the material presented to the students properly reflects the real case and, more importantly,that the quality of the delivered work is high.One of the reasons we can do a complex real-world case study in the integration project isthat is it not a course in any particular academic subject, like software engineering orinformation system design, in which students have to acquire textbook knowledge and skills. Itis a separate required course unit, specifically designed