Health Sciences Informatics Practicum/Purpose & Procedures

The purpose of the Health Sciences Informatics Practicum is to expose fellows to the use of information technology in a wide variety of settings in the health sciences environment. Based on the notion that the best learning is situated learning, the goal here is to provide trainees with opportunities to see informatics and information technology issues in action. Our intent is not so much to train students on existing systems, but to encourage them to think how systems can be improved, and also to provide project managers with an informatics research perspective with which they may not be familiar.

The advantages to the fellows are:

• To gain practical experience in management of IT
• To gain practical experience with specific IT systems
• To gain insight into informatics problems in a variety of settings
• To develop hypotheses that require research

The advantage to the practicum preceptor are:

• To get added manpower
• To get reports that could not otherwise be obtained

Administration

Fellows will be placed into practicum groups on a voluntary basis, with the Practicum Director making final assignment in the case of conflict. Practicum preceptors will negotiate with the Director the number of practica they will run during a year. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, there will be only one fellow placed with any practicum group at one time. Practica typically run for two quarters, depending on the preceptor’s preferences. Fellows will join an active work group, supervised directly or indirectly by the practicum preceptor.

In order to receive proper credit with the registrar's office for participating and completing a practicum it is important that you follow the DHSI and SOM procedures outlined below.

Have your Preceptor email the Program Director stating the practicum length, goal, and description of the deliverable. For practicum occurring outside of Johns Hopkins, the Practicum Agreement Form must also be completed Practicum Agreement.

On receipt of the Director’s approval, students may register for ME 600.805 at the School of Medicine Registrar’s office.

By the 2nd week of the practicum, students must submit a list of objectives to the Preceptor, Program Director and Program Coordinator. If a practicum is scheduled for more than one quarter, a progress report should be submitted the Program Coordinator via email at the end of each term.

Fellows are required to generate a final report on their practicum experience (deliverable).

Responsibilities of the Fellow

• Attendance
  
  Fellows should expect to spend about 20% of their time at the practicum site, with the specific timing to be negotiated with the practicum preceptor. “Attendance” may include project and staff meetings, as well as “front-line” activity, such as client meetings.

• Learning Objectives
  
  Fellows are responsible for completing a list of learning objectives by the end of the second week of the practicum. An objective should be expressed in the format, “By the end of the practicum, I shall have demonstrated—,” and options may be the demonstration of knowledge (through reports generated), or the demonstration of skills (through actions taken). Objectives must be submitted in electronic format to the practicum preceptor, Director and Program Coordinator. The practicum preceptor and the Program Director will review objectives.

• Reports
  
  A brief progress report should be submitted to the Program Coordinator at the end of each quarter.

• Final report
  
  Submission of the final report to the Practicum Director must occur within 2 weeks of completing the practicum. The report must contain the learning objectives, and state how (or whether) the objectives were met as well as document attendance. It should include any reports generated for the preceptor as an appendix. The final report must also include a list informatics issues that were raised in the fellow’s mind in the course of the practicum. The final report must be submitted electronically to the Program Director, Program Coordinator and practicum preceptor.
  
  To facilitate creation of the final report, fellows are encouraged to keep a journal of their activities and thoughts in the course of the practicum

• Evaluation
  
  Fellows must furnish the Director with an evaluation of the practicum experience, including comments about the quality of the educational experience and the quality of the precepting within two weeks of the practicum’s end. The evaluation must be sent in electronic format to both the Director and Program Coordinator.

NOTE: Fellows are expected to maintain records of their activites and effort during practicum

Responsibilities of the Practicum Preceptor

• Agreement
  
  The preceptor is responsible for emailing the Director and Program Coordinator agreeing to take on the fellow, and stating that they understand it will be about an 8 hour per week commitment. The specifics of the deliverable may take an additional 2 weeks, but should be defined by the fourth week, again, in an email from the preceptor.

• Scheduling
  
  The preceptor is responsible for placing the fellow in an appropriate work group, and for negotiating a schedule with the fellow. The Practicum Director is available to meet with work-group members to explain the purpose and functioning of the practicum.

• Assignment
  
  The preceptor is responsible for assigning reports to the Fellow. Suggestions for reports may come from work group members or from the Fellow. Questions about propriety of a report may be discussed with the Fellowship Director.

• Evaluation
  
  The preceptor is responsible for writing the Fellowship Director a letter of evaluation. It should make a statement regarding the Fellow’s attendance, the quality of their participation and contribution to the group, and an assessment of progress during the practicum. The letter should also make a statement about the quality and content of the reports. The preceptor should submit a copy of this evaluation to the Program Coordinator.

Responsibilities of the Practicum Director

• Practicum assignments
  
  The Director is responsible for making all final decisions on practicum assignments, including which practica will be offered, and which Fellow is assigned to which practicum when.

• Adequacy of the educational experience
  
  The Director is responsible for the review of the learning objectives, and the reports.

• Evaluation
  
  The Director is responsible for generating a grade for the Fellow. The Director is also responsible for providing feedback to the preceptors.

• Administration
  
  The Director is responsible for maintaining a file of all required documents submitted by the Fellow and preceptor with regards to the experience.

Practicum Completed

• Information Prescription (Welch Medical Library)
• Fellows Website (Advance Technology Information Systems)
• Efficiency Foundation (Center for Innovation Quality and Partial Cure)
• Wiz order (Johns Hopkins Medical)
• Education ontology (Medbiquitous)
• Remote services survey (Network Technology Services)
• Human disease database design (Pevsner Lab)
• Guideline barriers survey (Center for Innovations in Quality Patient Care)
• Graphical information system implementation (Baltimore City Department of Health)
• Clinical information system design (Department of Emergency Medicine)
• Information use analysis (Department of General Pediatrics)

Practicum Possibilites

Hopkins academic:
----------------------------
Christoph Lehmann: Pediatric Clinical Informatics and Patient Safety
Myron Yaster: Narcotic prescription order entry
Patti Abbott, Krysia Hudson, Steven Klapper: Eclipsys simulation lab
John Eng: Radiology diagnostic performance
Russ Taylor: Center for Integrated Surgical System

Information Prescription (Welch Medical Library)

Karen Robinson: Evidence-based practice center
Peter Pronovost: (Center for Innovation Quality and Partial Cure

Paul Law: Autism research database
Jonathan Weiner: EHR evaluation
Bill Yasnoff: Louiville HealtheTrust

Harold Lehmann: Decision models, Ethiopia/PEPFAR
Bill Weiss: Monitoring and Evaluation
Norma Kanarek: www.communityPHIND.net

Jonathan Pevsner: Human disease database design; SNP visulalizer
Steve Bova: Research informatics


Hopkins IT:
-----------------
Alan Coltri, Bill Ravitch (JHH, GI): Procedure Reporting System
Alan Coltri: System architecture; Wiz order (Johns Hopkins Medical)
Mike McCarty: Network Technology Services (e.g., RAUL authentication, Remote services survey)
Dongming Zhang: ATIS (e.g., fellows Web site)
Clinical information system design (Department of Emergency Medicine)
Information use analysis (Department of General Pediatrics)
Harold Lehmann: Pediatric culture book
JHMCIS: Multiple committees (CPOE implementation; decision support)
Amy Knight: CPOE (Bayview)
David Plaut: Casemix office (and Coding, with Paul Allen)

Joe Lombardo: Biosurveillance (APL)
Trish Perl, Xioayan Song: Biosense (Hopkins-->CDC)

Non-profit:
----------------
Peter Greene, Valerie Smothers: Medbiquitous Consortium
Diabetes education database development
Guy Fisher: Primary Care Coalition
Buzz Stewart, Jim Walker: Geisinger health services research/consumer health informatics
Robert Sawyer: VA
Elliot Siegel: Imaging informatics (VA)
Sam Dowding: JHPIEGO


Government: