Designing Master Curriculum of Nursing Informatics in Iran

In recent decades, nursing education is developing and expanding rapidly as a part of higher education system around the world. Despite tremendous advances in medical sciences in Iran, nursing informatics is still in its early years. Starting this field is necessary for nursing services. It can be used in educational, research, clinical and managerial issues. This study aimed at designing a Curriculum for Master studies of Informatics in Nursing in Iran. It was a mixed method study using Delphi technique. The population consisted of medical nursing and informatics experts who had a Ph.D. degree and were faculty member of the medical sciences universities of Iran. Purposeful and snowball sampling was used to select 45 individuals participated in this study. Data collection was initially carried out by review of literature and global experiences. Then, the Delphi method was used and the researcher-made questionnaires were sent through email in three steps. To complete and finalize the lessons, a video conferencing session was conducted with 20 faculty members of nursing and medical informatics. Eighty-one percent of experts considered designing nursing informatics curriculum as necessary and expressed their positive views on Nursing Informatics as a missing link in the application of knowledge and information in nursing which can create beneficial effects in nursing, has the potential for innovation and promotion of health and is the basis of professional knowledge development. The curriculum was designed as 12 units of compensatory courses, 16 units of compulsory courses, 14 optional units, 4 unit of thesis and required workshops. The results showed that designing nursing informatics curriculum in Master Degrees is a necessity which was approved by Nursing and Informatics Medical experts. The curriculum was sent to the Ministry of Health and Medical sciences as a proposed program to establish a nursing informatics branch