Take Part in the Future of Nursing with RNAO’s Nursing and eHealth Program
By Irmajean Bajnok, RN, MScN, PhD
Director
International Affairs and Best Practice Guidelines Programs
Centre for Professional Nursing Excellence
The beginning of the year is a time of retrospection and planning for the future, looking back at our successes and accomplishments while planning and prepping for our exciting events to come. The RNAO’s Nursing and eHealth Program is no exception to this and as I look back over the last few months, I am thrilled with the successes of the program.
The most recent success was the launch of the RNAO eHealth Toolkit at the end of last year. The Toolkit has been developed to assist nurses and others who have gained basic knowledge about eHealth through the RNAO Nursing and eHealth Education Program and the eHealth Champion Network, to take a leadership role in eHealth adoption in their workplace. The Tookit is a user-friendly blueprint for clinically driven eHealth adoption and outlines key steps for clinician-initiated eHealth implementation and project management at the unit or organization level. Topics include: project planning, scope generation, change management, knowledge professionalism, needs assessments, vendor selection, and the role of the eHealth Champions. Please click here to read more about the Toolkit and order a copy for your own use.
Another important milestone is the collaboration between Canada Health Infoway (Infoway) and the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario on the Ontario Nurse Peer Leader (Peer-to-Peer) Strategy. There are 14 nurse peer leaders, each representing one of Ontario’s LHINs. The key role of the Nurse Peer Leaders is to leverage existing eHealth resources and to engage nurses in a dialogue about eHealth and nursing practice. One of the main goals of the Strategy is to have 20% of nurses in each LHIN take the online RNAO Nursing and eHealth Education Program. More on this program can be found in this newsletter.
RNAO is in full swing celebrating February as Nursing and eHealth Month! Get informed. Get involved! Keep an eye out for announcements in RNAO’s publications like RNJournal and In the Loop! Watch for special prizes and activities. In particular this month we are challenging all nurses to access the Nursing and eHealth Course on line, as a key way to get involved and informed. If you have already done so, please urge a colleague to use this course to open the door to nursing and ehealth.