The Critical Role of IT Support Staff in Healthcare

This is a very exciting time to be exploring a career in Health IT Support! In this introductory course, you’ll learn about various roles in IT support that are common in healthcare. IT support staff play critical roles in many different healthcare venues. In addition to helping clinics, hospitals, and emergency rooms, you may end up providing support in a skilled nursing facility, ambulatory surgical center, virtual care setting, or even a patient’s home! On any given day, you may interact with nurses, physicians, pharmacists, physical therapists, social workers, other allied health professionals, patients or caregivers. Each of these individuals rely on IT support specialists to help them maintain a high reliability healthcare organization. As you learn about what makes Health IT unique, we hope you find inspiration in the stories shared by some of our very own IT support staff at Johns Hopkins. They’ll talk to you about the most common problems they help resolve as well as the complexity and range of issues that arise. Whether you dream of being an end-user computer support specialist, working at a healthcare help desk, or rising to an analyst role, we’re thrilled that you are embarking upon this journey. Welcome again!

• Why Health IT?
• This first module is designed to pique your interest about the exciting world of Health Information Technology, or HIT. Over the past decade, technology has had a tremendous impact on the way healthcare is delivered. As the work of clinicians, hospitals, and health systems has been re-imagined, the need for IT Support Specialists has grown. As you learn about what’s unique when working in Health IT (HIT) and what some common roles are, you’ll even see some examples of what a day-in-the life of an IT support specialist in healthcare looks like. You'll watch a help desk agent field a call from a very frustrated surgeon and through empathy and clear communication, helps to resolve the matter. During this module, you’ll be introduced to Johns Hopkins employees who are passionate about the critical role they play every day. They’ll share stories of inspiration and words of advice on how you can get your foot in the door as a Health IT support specialist. What are some examples of difficult calls they’ve handled? What are some of their proudest moments on the job? What are the most common IT issues they've helped troubleshoot? What kinds of tickets will you be helping to close someday? Get started to hear the answers to these questions and many more!
• Roles for Health IT Support Staff
• There are a variety of IT support roles that are important for keeping a hospital or health system running. In this module, you’ll learn about the kind of work that’s involved in this important and growing field. You’ll hear about what it means to be a high reliability organization and the kinds of leadership and communication skills you need to have to work in this space. You’ll get to see behind-the-scenes footage in the hospital where an IT support staff member helps a patient with their request. In another scene, you’ll see an IT support team member calmly troubleshoot an error message that a nervous employee is receiving. One of the unique aspects of healthcare compared to other fields is that there are so many clinical terms and topics that might be new to you. We want you to slowly gain exposure to the language used in hospitals as well as familiarity with terms such as chest x-rays, CT scans, second opinions, HIPAA, patient portals. Continue along to gain a better understanding of what’s involved in being an end-user computer support specialist, a help desk agent, or a healthcare IT analyst. No matter what step you take next in your career journey, just know that the rapidly growing field of health IT support has a place for you!