After a year of work in partnership with the University of Minnesota School of Nursing, I’m thrilled to announce that my first commercial, professional continuing education course is live:
Patient Engagement
in Health Information
An online C.N.E. course
at the University of Minnesota
School of Nursing
Register here.
From the course web page:
Target Audience:
Healthcare team members interested in learning to plan for and implement supportive actions for patient engagement and activation through the use of health information technology (IT).
The course is primarily targeted to nurses, who (in my experience) spend the most time engaging with patients and families. As noted below, nursing C.E. credits have been awarded. Other professions (MD etc) may be able to apply for credit, but that’s up to you, as the web page explains.
This is not a lightweight short/simple C.E. course.
Talking to people in the C.E. business, I’ve learned that many C.E. courses take about an hour, and many are free. This course isn’t like that: it’s an in-depth introduction to patient engagement in general, and to engagement through IT in particular. The rationale for patient engagement is presented, with numerous specifics and related readings. Included are:
- Video segments from an extended conversation I had with some great grad students
- Excerpts (PDF pages) from my book Let Patients Help
- Links to numerous resources and related readings: the PAM (Patient Activation Measure), important papers in the field (including the practical use of secure messaging as a “gateway” to portal use), etc.
In addition to the education, the student is led through creating an action plan for their own workplace: objectives, gap analysis, timeline and an SBAR document to present to their workplace leadership. (The SBAR model, developed by Kaiser in Colorado, organizes a recommendation in a “Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation” framework.)
Students who want C.E. credit must upload their action plan, to attest to having completed the work. For non-credit students this is optional.
The course has been awarded 12 contact hours by ANCC (the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation). See the course web page’s Accreditation heading for more specifics.
Price: $250 non-credit, $300 with credit.
Outline
Modules (from the course’s web page):
- Patient Activation and Engagement
- Benefits of Health Information Transparency
- The Myth of Compliance
- Enhancing Communications with Patients and Families through Personal Health Records
- Patient Generated Data, Data Quality, and eHealth Decision-Making
- Change Strategies and Creating Your Action Plan
Note: to people who are deeply involved in these fields, no single module is a deep dive into that subject. A course like that would be massive. What we’ve created is a solid introduction to each of these topics, in an action-oriented perspective. Take this course and I think you’ll understand why patient engagement is real and important, and you’ll be prepared to have meaningful conversations with patients, families, and your professional peers.
Thank you to the University of Minnesota School of Nursing for their vision.
I’ve wanted to do a course like this for years, literally. Without funding such things are generally just a wish. “The U” made it possible.
I also want to thank the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Aligning Forces for Quality, because it was through that project that I met the U’s Bonnie Westra, who managed this entire project amid her other duties. It has not been easy, and it’s a thrill to see it bearing fruit.
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