Promoting health informatics for multidisciplinary education in patient safety: a master course program in Japan

Abstract

Patient safety topics have been widely presented in undergraduate medical education. Some graduate programs have been developed in North America and typically focused on culture and cognitive factors. The Institute of Medicine (IOM)'s report-Health IT and Patient Safety: Building Safer Systems for Better Care addressed important issues that health IT can lead to safer care as well as introduce new risks. There is an increased need to include such topics in safety education programs. In this study, we aimed at reporting our approach regarding the promotion of health informatics as a core curriculum in a master course program. We compared our curriculum with those in recently published papers and major patient safety resources. Then, we conducted an interim survey by asking the first-year students to rate eight important patient safety topics in comparison with the AHRQ's published categories. Health Information Technology (HIT) was ranked as the most interesting topic (response rate was 100%, n=44).Our initiatives would be useful to establish a stronger link between patient safety informatics education and future HIT adoptions.