Improving the Curriculum with Ethics: Gaps between Perceived Ethical Challenges of Practitioners and Educators

Abstract

Health information management (HIM) professionals must address ethical challenges in their role as guardians ofpatients’ personal information and organizations’ proprietary information. Because of this need, HIM educatorsstrive prepare their students to address these challenges. Unfortunately, little evidence exists about specific areas ofapplied ethics that should be part of the HIM curriculum. The purpose of this exploratory study was to determine theethical issues relevant to the current practice in Health Information Management. In particular, the study aimed todetermine if the perceptions of HIM educators and practitioners regarding HIM workplace ethical issues wereconsistent, and to identify gaps in perceptions. The researchers distributed a survey to HIM educators and HIMpractitioners, 12 educators and 25 practitioners completed their surveys. Thematic content analysis indicated adivergence of themes among these groups. Overall, educators' responses reflected general knowledge areas whereaspractitioners’ comments were more specific in terms of ethics concerns. The study findings indicated a gap inperceptions signalling a need for increased communication regarding applied ethics in HIM practice so thatcurriculums could reflect both theory and application.