Graham Wright

• Professor
• Visiting Professor at Rhodes University

In the training of Nurses in South Africa does the curriculum include the subject of the nursing use of patient information? for example the collection of patient data, the validity of the data collection method, the rights of patients data and privacy, confidentiality, analysis and record methods?

Are the compulsory curriculum requirements?

Traditionally patients in South Africa, particularly in rural areas retain their own clinical record, often in an exercise book or similar. Healthcare staff also record the history of a particular visit often in a register

Has that changed over recent years?

Do the nurses keep and record of each patient in a register?

Do they record clinical information and treatment given?

What happens to that information?

I have searched the literature without success

The HELINA Education WG is working with the IMIA task force to review the IMIA Education recommendations. Prof Graham Wright is the Chair of the EWG and a member of the IMIA Task team,, and one of the authors of the original IMIA documents.

The HELINA Group ran an expert workshop at the HELINA 2018 conference in Nairobi which used the IMIA Knowledge Base framework to identify Health Informatics content relevant to Africa. The original documents have been used in many countries around the world and are being reviewed.

Participants were asked to picture the knowledge required by a person in charge of a Large Hospitals or Government Health Departments Information Function. They were asked to put a number 1 in a tick box against any knowledge that they though that person would require.

I attach the excel spreadsheet and would ask you to complete it if you work or live in Africa, Please send it to me@chirad.me and put an email address and Country in Africa and I will send some papers and keep you informed when we have sufficient responses to form some conclusions.

Thanking you in anticipation, Prof Graham Wright, Rhodes University, South Africa

I chair a number of pan African Health Informatics groups and our use of Websites has been a complete failure. Many users can not afford the high data costs; hence the exploration of mobile accessible solutions.

I have been exploring everything from Whats app to Facebook, it seems that Microsoft is still largely in use across Africa. SharePoint Online is available of mobiles but before I try it out I thought I would ask colleagues on Researchgate who may have experience.

The ongoing saga of improper access to personal medical data continues despite the multitude of computing standards for data protection.

Could Blockchain ensure the security of patient data while allowing access to appropriate healthcare staff?

In 1860 Nightingale wrote a paper on Hospital Statistics for the fourth International Statistical Congress in London. She maintained that standardised, accurate statistics would lead to improvements in medical and surgical practice [5]. The primary objective of her proposal was to acquire a standardised record of facts from which to calculate statistical results [7]. Nightingale also urged the adoption of William Farr's classification of diseases for the tabulation of hospital morbidity in her paper, Proposals for a Uniform Plan of Hospital Statistics . Until that time only causes of death were reported but Farr recognized that it was desirable "to extend the same system of nomenclature to diseases which, though not fatal, cause disability in the population, and now figure in the tables of the diseases of armies, navies, hospitals, prisons, lunatic asylums, public institutions of every kind, and sickness societies, as well as in the census of countries like Ireland, where the diseases of all the people are enumerated" [8].

Although this classification was never universally accepted, the general arrangement proposed by Farr, including the principle of classifying diseases by anatomical site, survived as the basis of the International List of Causes of Death. In 1946 the World Health Organization (WHO) established the International List of Causes of Morbidity to combine with the International List of Causes of Death and so the International Classification of Diseases was created.

Extract from Paper "Observations on Sustainable and Ubiquitous Healthcare Informatics from Florence Nightingale"

 In July 1860 Nightingale wrote a paper on Hospital Statistics that was read to delegates at the International Statistical Congress in London by Dr McWilliam. She states that at that time there was no uniform plan to which hospital statistics were kept. She proposes one such plan that had been trialled in several hospitals. The primary objective was to obtain a uniform record of facts from which to deduce statistical results for example; the total sick population – the number of beds constantly occupied during the year by disease, age and sex, the number of cases by age, sex and disease admitted for medical or surgical treatment during the year, the average duration in days and parts of a day of each disease by age and sex, the mortality from each disease by sex and age, the annual proportion of recoveries to beds occupied and to cases treated for each age, sex and disease. Nightingale’s paper was discussed at the meeting and as a result additions were suggested to her, which she acknowledged. Controversy arose regarding the practicality of collecting all the data suggested by Nightingale. Discussion occurred through one of the leading journals of the time the Medical Times and Gazette. The debate lasted several months but the Registrar General came to Nightingale’s rescue in October stating that the classification scheme that Nightingale had adapted, (the Registrar General’s own Classification) was not perfect, but the best available and that it was desirable that all statistics should be based on the same scheme [12]. Several of the London hospitals adopted Nightingale’s forms, agreed on a common patient registration system and that they should publish their statistics annually.

Extract from "Was Florence Nightingale the first Nursing Informatician?"

Has anyone used the Honey and Mumford tool to define students learning style? 

I know it is used in Medical Education in the UK but have found little use in Africa or other Health Professionals.how did you use the results in practice.

How did you use the results in practice?.