Irmajean Bajnok*, Toronto Track: Practice Track Presentation Topic: other Presentation Type: Oral presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Building: MaRS Centre Room: CR2 Date: 2008-09-05 09:00 AM – 10:30 AM Last modified: 2008-11-06

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Key objective:
1. To describe an eHealth champion program and its early outcomes related to supporting eHealth adoption among nurses in health care settings
2. To outline key elements of a successful eHealth champion program (lessons learned) to support eHealth adoption among nurses

As part of the Nursing and eHealth Project, funded by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care, the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario (RNAO), developed an eHealth Champion Program. This program was modeled after the highly successful RNAO Best Practice Guideline Champion Program, now widely utilized in Ontario to support successful implementation of evidence based practice. The goal of the eHealth Champion Program is to support understanding, acceptance and adoption of informatics in point of care activities for nurses and other members of the health team and to raise awareness among nurses about eHealth and its link to quality patient care and the nursing role, and to support nurses in eHealth adoption across all health care sectors.

The eHealth Champion Program consists of close to 300 nurses from all sectors and across all regions of the province of Ontario, and continues to grow. Champions are promoted by their organizations to attend workshops that are held across Ontario to prepare them with eHealth knowledge, and change strategies and processes to assist with eHealth adoption among nurses. As part of the workshop, participants receive an eHealth resource kit which includes readings, tools that helps participants determine and assess their organization's eHealth strategies, practice tools to facilitate websites, and a list of literature reference. At the end of the workshop, all participants are presented with an eHealth champion certificate. In their role as eHealth Champions, they promote nursing's involvement in eHealth for quality patient care in a variety of ways: seeking, creating and coordinating opportunity for nursing's involvement; mentoring others to promote and support knowledge transfer; proving operational support for eHealth integration within their organization; and being an eHealth resource to their organization and/ or local region.

Ongoing network meetings of eChampions are held every three months to maintain communication linkages and an opportunity to discuss successes and barriers to eHealth awareness, education and adoption; learn about strategies to promote awareness and adoption of eHealth in the workplace and update their knowledge about eHealth and informatics in nursing and health care. The Nursing eHealth Champions are also a key resource to contribute to eHealth content and policy development that affects nurses and patients. The eChampion Network provides a great opportunity for building varies networks or knowledge transfer amongst eChampions across organizations and in all health care sectors.

This presentation will focus on the recruitment and preparation of eHealth Champions, an outline of the key components of the champion preparation workshop, a profile of the eHealth champion cohort to date, and early outcomes of this strategy to support eHealth adoption among nurses. Key lessons learned related to development and use of this strategy will also be highlighted in this presentation.