Measuring the awareness of health care providers at Benghazi Medical Center for Health Informatics

Abstract

Health informatics has led to many changes in the health service delivery system. Awareness of health informatics is important and crucial to modern physicians. In general today there is a lack of awareness and understanding of health informatics among officials. Most of the institutions in the current environment have no idea about health informatics and its development. The objective of this study is to measure the health informatics awareness of healthcare providers (Staff) in Benghazi Medical Center. The study was an exploratory descriptive cross-sectional study targeted health care providers. The sample size distributed was one hundred forty. The tool was a questionnaire, and analytical (Frequency tables were used to summarize data. Mean and Standard Deviation. Custom Tables) statistics with the help of SPSS 2.7 software. The mean of awareness level was 12.9 (SD=3.1) and 72% did not receive training in health informatics. The majority of respondents from healthcare Providers between the age of 30-39 (53%, n=70) years with a mean of 34.5 years. Besides that, the average awareness among females was higher than that of males by 35%. The rate of awareness based on the type of profession was also at the level of the average among doctors by 22.7% and 12.2% for nurses and much less number for other categories. In conclusion, the study showed that health care providers' awareness of health informatics was not satisfactory and more than half of respondents had an average awareness. A large proportion of health service providers did not receive training on health informatics.