Thumbs up for ECDL in Wales

Health service staff believe basic IT skills training has improved the quality of care they give to patients, according to new research.

The Welsh IT agency Informing Healthcare quizzed more than 1,600 NHS Wales staff who completed training for the European Computer Driving Licence.

Just over one in four (26.5%) had clinical contact with patients and of those 34.2% reported that they believed the quality of care they delivered had improved and 14.1% said they had more time available for patients.

Staff with clinical contact with patients appeared to show an increased and significant level of benefit from the ECDL compared to those without clinical contact.

The research, published in this month’s Learning in Health and Social Care Journal, is based on a survey of participants in the Access to Learning project which ran from 2004 to 2007.

The respondents needed to have completed at least British Computer Society level 1 training (three ECDL modules) to complete the questionnaire.

Respondents reported that they undertook computer orientated tasks more often compared to before undertaking the ECDL and that they also had increased confidence to undertake those tasks.

Those with clinical contact who took part in the survey, including doctors, nurses and a wide range of allied health professionals, felt the improvement in the quality of care they could deliver was a result of more access to information and more time with patients.

A total of 35.7% of those with clinical contact said they used computers more often now compared to 17.1% of non-clinical staff.