AHIMA debuts new health informatics journal

The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) and the AHIMA Foundation have launched a new online scholarly peer-reviewed journal that focuses on teaching and workforce issues related to health informatics and information management.

Educational Perspectives in Health Informatics and Information Management (EPHIIM) aims to advance teaching and learning in health informatics and information management and to improve workforce practices through evidence-based research and scholarly consideration, according to a release. The inaugural issue includes articles that focus on research involving healthcare students enrolled in professional programs. EPHIIM will be published twice a year.

“The plan for EPHIIM is to provide greater opportunities for publication by featuring research articles of interest to the health informatics and information management educator community,” wrote editor Rebecca B. Reynolds, EdD, RHIA, chair and associate professor in the Department of Health Informatics and Information Management at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis in her introduction to the issue. “These topics include teaching, learning and workforce issues in the health information field. ...The intent of this journal is to provide a mechanism for sharing best practices in teaching in a complex, evolving environment.”

Articles in the first issue of Educational Perspectives in Health Informatics and Information Management include:

• A study conducted by the AHIMA Foundation and TrustHCS found that although larger providers are more likely to have a clinical documentation improvement (CDI) program already in place, CDI is becoming ubiquitous within healthcare. “The Growth in the Clinical Documentation Specialist Profession” suggests that the role of the clinical data specialist will continue to expand and that by 2014, approximately 80 percent of hospitals interviewed in this study will have a CDI program in place.
• EHR systems specifically built for mobile devices earned significantly higher usability scores from health science students in a study conducted by researchers at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minn.  In “EHR Usability on Mobile Devices,” the authors also found that graduate students were more likely to rate the usability of EHR systems higher than undergraduate students.
• Higher education must do more to improve the critical thinking skills of allied health students, according to researchers at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis. In a study examining the critical thinking skills of health informatics and allied health students, "Critical Thinking Skills of Allied Health Science Students: A Structured Inquiry," researchers found that that 64 percent of students participating in the study had weak critical thinking skills, 31 percent had moderate critical thinking skills, and 3 percent had strong critical thinking skills. The study found differences in critical thinking skills based on program type and academic level.

The complete articles are available online.