By the time this year’s incoming healthcare students graduate, the way we work across our Health Organizations will be different. Our staff will have had the support and training to work in a new environment, but what about the new graduates, our staff members of the future? How can we make sure they are ready for the changes that are coming?

The CST Student Readiness team brought the Health Organizations and academic leaders together to discuss this important question at a recent Student Readiness Forum. Over 30 academics from across the Lower Mainland took part in the event – one of the first times the Health Organizations have reached out to them regarding integration of health informatics in curricula.
“It’s important that the students we have coming into our workforce have foundational and core informatics skills, so they are ready for ehealth environments from the get-go,” says Heather Straight, Director, Clinical Education, Learning and Development at VCH.

“We want institutions to think about how they are going to prepare their students for working in a technology-supported environment.”

Grace Mickelson, Corporate Director, Academic Development, PHSA, was encouraged by the support shown for preparing students, noting that the forum has stimulated a lot of further activity.
“There was definitely consensus that it was beneficial for students to prepare for the system that will be implemented through CST before they enter the workforce,” she said. “We’ve also had a lot of people from the schools come forward since the event to ask how they can get involved.”

The Student Readiness team is continuing to work with academic leaders to help them look at ways they can incorporate the relevant changes and new materials into their curricula. This work includes the potential for faculty to participate in the CST design and build process, so they have maximum opportunities to learn more about the project and be able to build some of the new workflows into their simulation labs.

Heather and Grace will be presenting the outcomes of the recent work of the CST Student Readiness team at the BC Health and Innovative Technology Showcase (eHITS) on May 9 in Vancouver.

Background information

• CST is a joint initiative of VCH, PHSA and PHC, and one of the largest and most complex healthcare projects in Canada. It spans across several areas of the continuum of care, including: acute care inpatient and outpatient units and ambulatory care. As well as creating consistent, leading practices, and a shared clinical information system, CST will deliver HIMSS Level 5 functionality.
• Clinical design teams, made up of hundreds of highly-skilled, multi-disciplinary professionals from across the three Health Organizations and Team IBM (experts from IBM Technical Services, Deloitte, Leidos Solution Builders and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre), started work on April 7, 2014. These teams are tasked with designing our future workflows, based on leading practices. In doing so, they are defining the requirements for our new clinical information system.

For more information, please contact Donna Stanton, CST Executive Director/Transformation Lead, VCH at donna.stanton@vch.ca. You’re also invited to submit suggestions for future articles. If you have questions or feedback, please email info@CSTproject.ca.