Health Information Students Undergo Training, Tour Johns Hopkins

Students and faculty in Penn College's Health Information majors have had a busy spring, what with bachelor-degree accreditation, Pennsylvania Cancer Registry training and touring a renowned medical facility. Ten students (as well as faculty members Daniel K. Christopher and Michele M. Budnovitch) recently concluded 24 hours of training over three days: Joseph D. Finkel, Christiana M. Snyder, Sally E. Barbera, Kristine A. King, Carolyn M. Wertman, Jayne E. VonDreau, Kelley N. O'Keefe, Allison M. Held, Thomas N. Williams and Eliana R. Keeney. The sessions were held in the Madigan Library and the Breuder Advanced Technology and Health Sciences Center by the PCR represented by Stephen Slack, field representative, and Wendy Aldinger, quality assurance manager which plans to train students on an annual basis. "The training was a great opportunity for us," said Snyder, of Williamstown. "I liked that they provided the training on campus and the databases were interesting." Topics included "Introduction to the Cancer Registry Profession" and "Learning the Basics of Cancer Data Collection," which featured hands-on work with online reference tools that included the National Cancer Institute's SEER database. Students worked with actual cancer data and were able to plot the incidence of cancer around Pennsylvania nuclear power plants, worked with a sample patient record to abstract cancer data and learned details of National Cancer Data Collection standards. Two semester-long internships at a health-care site are a required part of the health information curriculum, and the Pennsylvania Cancer Registry is a popular internship location for Penn College students. Graduates of the associate-degree major are eligible to take the Registered Health Information Technician exam and graduates of the bachelor-degree program are eligible to take the Registered Health Information Administrator exam. Sixteen members of the Health Information Club, accompanied by Christopher and Budnovitch, traveled to Johns Hopkins Bayview in Baltimore on March 30. The group toured the facility, the emergency room and the Health Information Department; the daylong visit also allowed time in Inner Harbor. The club, which annually organizes a student trip, traveled to New York City in 2011.