Health record keeping should be taught in universities – HRORBN Registrar

Why are activities of the Health Records Officers Registration Board of Nigeria not publicized like other agencies?We are not living in the shadow. Even if we are not publicized, our activities are being felt nationwide. If you have a course to be in any hospital either public or private, you will see our presence. We […]

Why are activities of the Health Records Officers Registration Board of Nigeria not publicized like other agencies?
We are not living in the shadow. Even if we are not publicized, our activities are being felt nationwide. If you have a course to be in any hospital either public or private, you will see our presence. We are the front desk officers that you meet if you want to find your statement in the hospitals, the record personnel. You must have a reason to contact such people irrespective of the hospital whether public or private, so when you look at it through that angle, you will know we are not in isolation but when it comes to public awareness, that the job of this category of people has relevance or regulations governing its operation, definitely we are silent in that aspect because we have not been given adequate publicity on our function of regulating.
When you regulate there must be enforcement and that aspect of enforcement we are very backward not because we don’t want to enforce but this is because the majority of employers of this category of people are public hospitals and being an organ of government too you have some limitation.  NAFDAC apart from being a regulatory body also has in their rule to enforce , but in our own case we can only prosecute and if you are not doing that kind of advocacy, it will be difficult for the society to know that this thing we are doing have some legal implication or it’s not the right thing.
Another aspect of it is that since the creation of the board in 1989, we have been staying in Lagos and not getting public attention. Which is what we are trying to do now, to make ourselves available to the society that this is a government organization and these are the role and what is expected of them. But gradually, we are moving out, we are present in Lagos, Kaduna, Lokoja and about opening an office in Enugu and Uyo. We want to have an office in each of the geo political zones and we have two offices in Abuja, the headquarters and an annex office.

Do you hope to continue like this or find a way around it in regulating record officers in public hospital?
Majority of the employers of these categories of hospitals are public hospitals. That does not mean that the private hospitals are also not employing our members. We also have significant members that are working in private health facilites but there is also a challenge even within the government hospitals.
Between 60 to 70 percent of the people doing the job are not even trained. For the fact that they are not trained, you cannot consider them to be our members and that is why we are now revolutionalizing the profession that since there is a rule governing this profession, we insist that each and every hospitals must have a trained and qualified health record officer even if it’s going to be at a technician level because its stage by stage.
It is not that government stopped us from regulating the practice but it will be very difficult for another government organization to go and cause another government organization embarrassment.
The two agencies- the hospitals and the regulatory body are both babies of the federal ministry of health under the supervision of one minister.  So some of these things we address at formal or informal meetings.
We cannot continue like this because the awareness is (now) there. People now claim they have the right to access medical facilities so are more interested in knowing what their medical history is and some are now threatening to go to court about the service he or she receives from a hospital.
With that level of awareness of their right to the service they receive, the regulatory body has to ensure that people that are rendering that service have the authority license and mandate to offer that services, because in case of litigation, the law is not looking at the person that committed the offence but at the employer because he is acting on behalf of the organization.

Basically what does it take to be a health record officer?
In the past, employers of labour especially in the health institutions will just appoint anybody that has the ability to read and write as a record clerk or card issuer as they were known in those days. What was required then is to train people as medical record assistants and with your primary six or standard seven certificate you will gain admission to go on the job training  because most of the people that are being trained are already employed as record clerk but as everything is revolving they graduated from record technicians to having a national certificate which has people that have attempted GCE but not necessarily that they must have the required pass then and with some relevant working experience.
You must have at least five passes in any of the basic five subjects so that they will give you admission for a diploma programme, coupled with the theme of study.
We work with the organ that government recognized as a body to accredit the diploma programme that is the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE). Since the admission is done through JAMB, the programme must be accredited by NBTE. Our diploma is accredited by NBTE up to the Higher National Diploma level.
We also have professional diploma where they are trained in practical than in theory and that is a three years training programme and at the end you will be given a professional diploma that is equivalent to a national diploma.
Is the course not offered in universities?
Yes for now, we don’t have any Nigerian university that is offering it at a BSC level. We have some few universities that are planning to do an abridgement programme for people that have HND already to bridge the gap which is purely because of the dichotomy in the system.
The board has also started discussing with some universities and the National University Commission to look into universities that want to start the programme. I am totally against the trend that is obtainable where our professional colleagues step out to Benin Republic to go and obtain a BSC in the programme. we have not less than 600 professional colleagues that has been stagnated as a result of the scheme of service that say if you don’t have BSc you cannot go beyond grade level 14 that are now going to Benin to obtain that within a short period.

What is the knowledge gap you found?
The people that are doing this job presently, it was identified that they have the theoretical knowledge of computer, they know the application, software but when it comes to the application of ICT in the management of data, we find out that we are lacking behind. So we say these people need more knowledge in computer so we have to review the syllabus to expose them to more practical application of computer for them to do their job.