COMPUTER LITERACY ENHANCEMENT IN THE TEACHING HOSPITAL OLOMOUC. PART I: PROJECT MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES. SHORT COMMUNICATION

Information explosion and globalization make great demands on keeping pace with the new trends in the healthcare sector. The contemporary level of computer and information literacy among most health care professionals in the Teaching Hospital Olomouc (Czech Republic) is not satisfactory for efficient exploitation of modern information technology in diagnostics, therapy and nursing. The present contribution describes the application of two basic problem solving techniques (brainstorming, SWOT analysis) to develop a project aimed at information literacy enhancement.


BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECT
In the planning stage of the project information retrieval was performed to estimate the contemporary trends in enhancing computer and information literacy of healthcare professionals worldwide.In the last decade of the 20th century health care services in the developed countries of the world were undergoing dynamic and core changes.In the context of building the information society of the 21 st century implementation and efficient use of information technology are coming to the forefront.A dramatic increase in the amount of available clinical information resources is a tool for improving diagnosis and therapy, but only when "best evidence" is brought to the point of decision-making.The Internet is a powerful engine contributing to this transformation offering the environment for electronic patient records, practice guidelines, user-friendly health portals and wireless communication.The new paradigm of health care delivery consists of a multidisciplinary team of clinician and non-clinician providers (including information professionals) and is oriented on optimization of patient outcomes.The team work is a major prerequisite for continuous quality improvement following a sustainable upward spiral.The continuous quality improvement is closely related to such issues as cost containment, higher level of patient and provider satisfaction, better health status and quality of life of the population.The data obtained from the world biomedical literature confirm that in most health care settings it is especially common to underestimate the time required for training personnel in the use of information tools.[3][4] TEAM BUILDING A multidisciplinary team was established with the aim to assess the contemporary level of computer literacy among healthcare professionals in the Teaching Hospital Olomouc (Czech Republic) and propose a modular training course in information technology skills suited for different categories of the employees.The team was composed of specialists in the information and communication technology, healthcare management, nursing and medical education, statistics and librarianship.Another aspect of the team building was to select suitable individuals "to cast in" specific roles during implementation of the project (i.e.co-ordinators, analysts, statisticians, implementers, resource investigators, team workers). 5

PROJECT DEVELOPMENT
The process of project development was based on two basic problem solving techniques, 6 namely brainstorming and SWOT analysis.
Information explosion and globalization make great demands on keeping pace with the new trends in the healthcare sector.The contemporary level of computer and information literacy among most health care professionals in the Teaching Hospital Olomouc (Czech Republic) is not satisfactory for efficient exploitation of modern information technology in diagnostics, therapy and nursing.The present contribution describes the application of two basic problem solving techniques (brainstorming, SWOT analysis) to develop a project aimed at information literacy enhancement.

Technique I: Brainstorming
Brainstorming belongs to methods for developing creative solutions to problems.There are some generally adopted rules how to brainstorm: participants of a session should focus on a problem, offer plenty of [unusual] solutions, push the ideas as far as possible, not criticize or evaluate any ideas during the session, analyse the results, and finally select the best option.A session leader plays an important role being responsible for the control of the session, definition of the problem to be solved, maintenance of enthusiastic and non-critical atmosphere, adequate participation of all the members, orientation on practical solutions, and last but not least keeping records of the session. 7rainstorming can be done either in groups or individually.Because of the lack of experience with the technique itself, a mixture of both the types was used at the initial stage of the project, starting with individual brainstorming which produced a broad range of ideas, though sometimes "shallow" ones.On the other hand, it gave opportunities to creative but quiet people without being limited by time, and dominated by other group members.The individual brainstorming was then followed up by the group session which formulated practical goals of the future project:

Technique II: SWOT analysis
SWOT stands for Strengths -Weaknesses -Opportunities -Threats.It aims to identify the strengths and weaknesses of an organization, and the opportunities and threats in the environment.The advantage of SWOT analysis is its capability to connect internal factors to formulate new strategies. 9,10 e manager of the project under consideration decided to start SWOT analysis with drawing attention to the aspects that represented the weaknesses.It is a well-known-fact that clearly specified weaknesses can be converted into challenges and serve as incentives.The list of the weaknesses contained the issues we thought we could improve, overcome, and/or achieve in the Teaching Hospital Olomouc: Surprisingly, the team produced a rich list of strengths that were considered powerful prerequisites for successful project implementation, e.g.• Experienced and high-qualified team members.
• Qualifications of some team members to develop and implement training courses in biomedical information retrieval.
• Enthusiasm of facilitators to educate and interest in training among the hospital staff.
• Support from the hospital top management.
• Previous experience in national and international projects dealing with application of information technology in medicine and healthcare. 12 was fairly difficult to envisage threats that could hamper the project implementation.Finally, most of the team members agreed that they were afraid of insufficient funding, unexpected Internet and Intranet services failures, excessive workload, fatigue and low motivation of the hospital staff which would discourage them from participation in training courses.D. Sedlář, J. Potomková, J. Řehořová, P. Sečkář, V. Sukopová

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Imbalance in information technology (IT) skills and competencies among different categories of healthcare professionals.• Absence of a structured system of training courses for end-users with different levels of IT knowledge.• Volunteeriness in IT knowledge enhancement among hospital staff.• Computer phobia typical for older generations.• Insufficient exploitation of currently available Internet and Intranet tools and resources due to insufficient training of end-users.The next step of SWOT analysis was focused on discussing the opportunities which could be exploited in favour of our intentions, in particular: • Possibility to submit a grant proposal to the Czech Grant Agency IGA supporting biomedical research to get 2-year-funding.• Access to technology-driven medical and healthcare information services provided by the joint learning resource centre of the Teaching Hospital and Palacký University Faculty of Medicine in Olomouc.• Nationwide policy supporting implementation of the National Information System in hospitals and healthcare settings.• Close vicinity of the Palacký University Faculty of Medicine with its educational capacity and the will to share knowledge and experience.• Previous cooperation with the Institute for Postgraduate Medical Education (Prague, Czech R.) offering a modular training programme aimed at computer literacy improvement in medicine and healthcare since 2000. 11