A Proposed Approach to Investigate Whether Postgraduate Health Care Management Education in Australian Universities Facilitates the Development of Informatics Competencies.

Competencies have emerged as being important in healthcare. AIDH has health informatics competencies and ACHSM has health service management competencies but as health care is rapidly changing, it is important that the required competencies continue to evolve. The aim is to investigate whether postgraduate health care management education in Australian universities facilitates the development of informatics competencies. The proposed approach followed the NWCPHP 'Steps Used to Effectively Map Preexisting Courses to Competency Sets' to map the health informatics competency statements against the ACHSM accredited and RACMA recognised, postgraduate health care management programs offered domestically in Australia. The initial results show that only 10% of the AHICF competencies were fully addressed, 12% of the AHICF competencies were mostly addressed, 28% were partially addressed, and 50% of the AHICF competencies were not addressed at all. The proposed course competency mapping approach demonstrates that there is a need to revisit the informatics competencies taught in postgraduate health care management programs in Australia.

Use of Concept Mapping to Identify Expectations of Pharmacy Students Selecting Elective Courses.

The objective of this study was to demonstrate the use of concept mapping as a method for analyzing pharmacy students' qualitative perceptions of their expectations of elective courses and to thus help guide delivery methods and course content. A survey containing demographic, Likert scale, and open-ended questions was administered to second-year pharmacy students prior to the start of elective courses and an innovative methodology, concept mapping, was used to identify major themes relating to student expectations. The association between preferred class delivery method (online versus in person) with student gender and English-as-a-second-language status (ESL) was also assessed. Note that this study was conducted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ninety-eight out of 133 students (74%) completed the survey. Overall, 56% students stated that they preferred online delivery of courses (68% of these students were female, 36% were male). ESL status did not impact preference. The most common themes relating to student course expectations were the desire to learn about the elective course topic as well "real-world" utility. Our combined data indicate that delivery method is a key factor contributing to students' choice of elective course and that concept mapping is an effective and efficient way to help identify student expectations of elective courses.