The Clinical Informatics Officer
I'm a doctor. My hospital recently advertised for a 'Clinical Informatics Officer' whose role is described thus:
"The overall purpose of Informatics and the Clinical Informatics Officer supported by the Chief Clinical Informatics officer has been defined as to: Enable promote and support the effective use of data, information, knowledge and technology to support and improve health and health-care delivery. The role of Informatics, therefore, is to ensure an organisation has the required cost-effective systems, information and technology services to provide excellent clinical care to its patients, in conjunction with its stakeholders throughout the wider health community."
The job is half a day a week and intended for an otherwise full-time doctor/nurse/allied health professional.
I played around with computers a little in school but I haven't looked 'under the hood' since my Acorn RiscPC expired in 1997. Currently I intereract with computers almost entirely as a user, setting up my parents' Windows 8 box recently notwithstanding.
I very much want to improve IT in my hospital and I think I have pretty clear ideas about where the problems are for end users.
However, I know very little about some of the qualifications asked for in the person specification and how useful they would be in real life:
"Masters level degree in either informatics, business analysis or process reengineering, or equivalent (or relevant experience)
Management and/or leadership qualification at QCF level 5 or equivalent (or relevant experience)
BCS Chartered IT Professional (or equivalent)
PRINCE2 Practitioner (or equivalent project management methodology)
Master's degree in risk, governance and patient safety (or equivalent)
Fellow of BCS"
I'm willing to study something that will be useful but I already have more letters after my name than in it so I'm not keen to do more exams just for the heck if it. Are any of the above qualifications actually useful for an informatics officer?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
