The first round of the International Online Short Course on Fundamentals of Nursing Informatics was held successfully

This online short course started on February 20, 2021, and the course content was presented to the audience in four weekly sessions online and within the Zoom platform. Each training session lasted at least two hours, which included two lectures, a 10-minute break and 15 minutes for question and answer. The specific purpose of this course was to introduce and to define the field of Nursing Informatics (NI) and to express the principles of this field, its applications and what is the necessity for the 21st century nurses. In addition, other objectives of this course were to acquaint the audience with the main competencies of the field, standardized nursing terminologies, preparing for the future of nursing informatics, project management and paradigm shifting of NI. This session was welcomed by foreign and Iranian audience.

The first session of this short-term online course entitled "Principles of Nursing Informatics" with a lecture by Dr. Tania Azadi, a PhD graduate in Health Information Management and Health Informationist from TUMS, with the participation of 197 participants from 14 different countries, including the United States, Britain, Spain, Brazil, Qatar, Iraq, Turkey, Palestine, Nigeria, Ghana, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Lithuania and Iran.

The second session entitled "Nursing Informatics Competencies" was delivered by Professor Toni Hebda from USA, along with 159 participants from 25 countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Iraq, Turkey, Nigeria, Ghana, Georgia, Brazil, Spain, Qatar, Lithuania, Afghanistan, Palestine and Gaza, Tanzania, Lebanon, Germany, China, Cyprus, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Poland, India, Tajikistan and the United Arab Emirates.

The third session of the course entitled “Standardized Classification Systems in Nursing Informatics” lectured by Dr. Melody Rose, from United States with 167 participants from 25 countries.

The final session of the course enjoyed a lecture by Professor Carolyn Sipes from USA on "The Future Perspective of Nursing Informatics" and a lecture by Dr. Asieh Darvish, a lecturer of the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, TUMS, on "Paradigm shifting in Nursing Informatics" on Monday, March 15, 2021, which was attended by 137 participants from 25 countries.

The target group and audience of this short course were mainly nurses and other graduates and undergraduates interested in health care. Graduate students and nurses working in hospitals were also able to benefit from this course. In accordance with the previous educational plans and with the general purpose of evaluating the feedback of learners from the relevant training course, the pre-test and post-test methods were used in each session. At the beginning of each session, a pre-test consisting of designing and executing five multiple-choice questions in English, from the educational content of the same session was performed using the Polling feature in the Zoom platform. The same questions were asked again at the end of the session and after the presentation of the educational content to assess the learners' knowledge of the information provided and the effectiveness of the training. In each session, more than 60% of the participants took the tests. Participants actively and significantly participated in pre-test and post-test questions and answers. At the end of the last session, five open-ended questions were answered for discussion, and in addition to a number of respondents expressing their answers and comments and discussions, the link to complete the answers to these questions and a few other questions were given to the contacts in Google form with a one-month deadline to study and review the submitted content and send a response. At present, the participants have the opportunity to answer the open-ended questions about the course by reviewing the contents taught (which is available on the website of TUMS, in the section of short-term training courses) until April 15.

A total of 506 participants from 25 different countries participated in this online course. At present, there are no formal training program in nursing informatics for foreign students in Iran, and the faculty members of the School of Nursing and Midwifery hope that holding such short courses would be a way to assess the success of the NI courses and the audience’s attention in neighboring countries, the region and international audience in this new and up-to-date field. The statistics of foreign participants were excellent and the composition of the participants showed that not only this field has a very interested audience in the region, but also the presence of audiences from Europe, Africa and the United States showed a very clear vision for the faculty to work more seriously in this field which is achievable. Therefore, the agenda is to design a master's degree in nursing informatics at TUMS in the near future.

Video and slides:

http://en.tums.ac.ir/en/content/546/fundamentals-of-nursing-informatics