Institute:Office of National Coordinator (ONC) Workforce Training Curriculum
Component:The Culture of Health Care
Unit:An Overview of the Culture of Health Care
Lecture:Learning more about the culture of health care
Slide content:Where to Look People in health care Health professionals Everyone else Places of health care Clinics, hospitals, etc. Processes and practices What do they do? Why? Values written and unwritten Interaction with technology Policies, regulatory Symbols (white coats) Language medical talk Values - e.g. nursing to put patient at ease Norms often in heuristics: treat the patient, not the lab Folklore stories convey implicit values Ideology explicit values Mass media public perception 12
Slide notes:Lets assume youre convinced that the study of health care culture is important to successful development, implementation, and maintenance of health information technology for patients and clinicians. Also, you believe that understanding people and processes is critical to successful HIT [H-I-T]. How can you learn more? Where should you look? You are likely to learn more by observing the people in health care, the places where they work, their work processes and practices, their values and beliefs, and their interactions with technologies, including not just computer technology but other technologies as well. When considering the people, you should include not only health professionals but everyone else that participates in the health care processes. Places where health care takes place are varied from modern tertiary [ tur - sh uh - ree ] academic medical centers to small primary care and community clinics, to long-term care facilities and, of course, patients own homes. When studying health care processes and practices, its not only important to characterize what people do (or their workflow) but also to understand why they do things in the ways that they do them. Understanding values requires not only examination of explicit written and spoken values but also values that seem to be implicit or that can be inferred from behavior, especially when conflicts arise. Finally theres much to be learned from examining the interaction of people in the health care system with the technologies that help them do their work. As Ed Hutchins has said, [quote]We cannot know what the task is until we know what the tools are. [end quote] 12