As the healthcare industry landscape continues to shift, professionals face new challenges and opportunities. From technological advancements to evolving patient care solutions, staying effective and compliant requires leveraging a range of essential skills.
Whether you’re a seasoned practitioner or just beginning your journey in the healthcare field, honing your skills can elevate the performance of healthcare organizations, enhance patient outcomes and help drive the integration of new innovations.
Technology Proficiency
With the increasing development of emerging technologies, such as machine learning and AI in the healthcare industry, professionals must be comfortable navigating and leveraging a variety of digital tools. This includes electronic health records (EHR) and electronic medical records (EMR), telemedicine platforms, and data analytics software. Health informatics and healthcare analytics have expanded to provide healthcare professionals with the capabilities to harness patient and organizational data and the processes to find efficient solutions. Having a proficiency in informatics and analytics as well as the latest in technological advancements allows healthcare professionals to enhance their decision-making, improve processes and provide better patient care experiences while ensuring a higher level of ethical compliance and accuracy with their services.
Many healthcare professionals today have backgrounds in tech and use these skills regularly, while exploring new ways to leverage technology in healthcare settings.
Sabita Maharjan, a graduate of USF Health’s Master of Science in Health Informatics program, spoke about her desire to learn more about the intersection of healthcare and technology during her time as a medical technologist.
“While working as a medical technologist, I was impressed by how technology made our jobs so much easier through electronic medical records. I was then interested in the technology field while still being associated with healthcare,” Maharjan says.
The Human Element
Beyond practical clinical expertise, healthcare is fundamentally about caring for people. Empathy and compassion allow professionals to understand and connect with patients on a deeper level, ensuring patients feel valued, respected, and supported throughout their experience.
Effective communication is an essential cornerstone for healthcare professionals when conveying complex medical information clearly and empathetically to patients, families, and colleagues. A more patient-centered approach to healthcare allows patients to gain more control over their healthcare service and also helps provide more personalized solutions to each patient’s personal needs. Integrating human element skills like empathy, communication and compassion fosters trust and collaboration between professionals and patients and empowers professionals to make a lasting, positive impact on their patient’s lives and well-being.
Dr. Ali Yalcin, professor of the Healthcare Data Mining and Predictive Analytics courses through USF Health’s online MSHI-Healthcare Analytics and SAS Approved Graduate Certificate in Healthcare Analytics programs, understands the human element of analytics work, stressing the importance of considering who you are building solutions for, so these solutions are viable from a practical and patient-friendly perspective.
“Listen to domain experts. If it’s healthcare, listen to healthcare professionals. If it’s older adults, listen to the older adult about what they want. I’ve learned the hard way that you can sit around and build things all you want, but if no one is going to use it, it’s just as good as not building it,” Yalcin says. “The best way to understand needs and build the right product, the right interface, is to just listen.”
Ethical Integrity
Healthcare professionals are entrusted with upholding the highest level of moral and professional standards. Ensuring the well-being and confidentiality of their patients, respecting patient autonomy and advocating for their best interests are key components to a healthcare professional’s ethical integrity. Healthcare professionals are constantly required to stay in-the-know regarding the latest regulatory changes in the field and responsibly acting in accordance with these regulations. Upholding ethical principles fosters trust, integrity and accountability within the healthcare community.
Aspiring health informatics professionals must demonstrate competency in healthcare professionalism which can be evaluated by the AMIA/CAHIIM accreditation standards guide. This offers a way for educational institutions to objectively evaluate graduates in both cognitive and noncognitive skills and properly measure overall competency by how professionals demonstrate knowledge, skills and attitudes/abilities. It is crucial for healthcare professionals to understand the legal and ethical issues in health informatics to help guide them towards optimized ethical integrity.
Soft Skills
Healthcare IT professionals can leverage important “soft” skills that are important and in demand in their field with the growing impact of digitized healthcare processes. Some of these skills may include:
- Communication: IT professionals with effective written and verbal communication skills are sought after to execute digital processes transitions and management as seamlessly as possible.
- Negotiation: The ability to understand resistance to change and find satisfactory solutions that allow for progress is critical to success in the healthcare IT field.
- Strategic thinking: Healthcare IT professionals who can uncover the root causes of problems, while remaining forward-thinking and open-minded, bring tremendous value to organizations and their clients.
- Team building: Knowing how to motivate people to work together is vital to healthcare IT professionals when putting together an implementation team or helping healthcare facility employees acclimate to a new system.
Continuing Education
In an industry as dynamic as healthcare, learning must never stop. Professionals need to stay informed of the latest medical advancements, evidence-based practices, and regulatory changes to deliver optimal care. Embracing a mindset of continuous learning fosters professional and personal growth, keeps skills current, and ensures the highest standards of patient care. Professionals must be able to pivot quickly in response to changing patient needs and think critically to evaluate information, identify patterns, and make informed decisions under pressure. These types of skills are in a perpetual state of advancement and maintenance to ensure healthcare professionals are operating at their optimal performance levels consistently.
Gain Essential Skills Through USF Health
As the healthcare landscape evolves at a rapid pace, healthcare professionals need to face the complexities of the modern healthcare industry by enhancing their skills. USF Health prides itself on developing the future of healthcare with programs and curriculum designed to empower healthcare professionals to do more and experience a difference in healthcare education. Offering programs in health informatics and healthcare analytics, USF Health’s Morsani College of Medicine is dedicated to student success and playing a key role in shaping future healthcare workers.
