Assessment of Skills and Abilities for Information Technology among Hospital Staff, Khunhan Hospital, Sisaket Province

Abstract

The objective of this study was to assess skills and abilities for information technology (IT) among hospital staff in Khunhan Hospital of Sisaket Province. All 191 staff who used computor on a regular basisi were requested to fill a questionnair for assessment of skills and abilities for information technology; and the response was obtained from 117 of them. Data were analyzed by using frequency and percentage. It was found that the ability for using computer IT among the majority of hospital staff was at a moderate level (72.65%). Three most frequent IT functions were (1) searching information on the Internet, (2) Microsoft office program, and (3) running the database program. The most commonly used softwares were Microsoft Word in office applications, Photoshop for graphics program, Internet Explore for Internet searching, Microsoft Access for computer programming and running database, and Hotmail for electronics-mail. Majority of the staff (61.5%) had poor level of hardware skills and ability. The percentages of staff who had high level of IT skills for computer programs were 25.0% for Microsoft window, 24.8% for E-mail utilization, 24.8% for Microsoft PowerPoint, 18.3% for Microsoft Word, 16.5% for Microsoft Excel, and 2.2% for Microsoft Access. Information obtained from this study could be useful for ranking IT skills among hospital staff as well as the planning on developing training activities to improve IT skills and capacity among hospital personnel.