Data Literacy Skills of Health Information Management Professionals in Tertiary Hospital, Bayelsa State, Nigeria

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Abstract

Data literacy is the bedrock of every organizational decision support, as such health information management professionals is pivotal to this crucial role through constant interaction with patients on a daily basis. These roles can only be acted upon swiftly if they are 
data literate and competent. A situation whereby these factors are not in existence, there is every tendency that health information management professionals will face threat on their roles. It is against this backdrop this study considers it apt to investigate the data literacy skills (DLS) of health information professionals in tertiary hospitals in Bayelsa state. Descriptive research design was adopted. Population consists of 78 health information management professionals in tertiary hospitals in Bayelsa state. Total enumeration sampling technique was adopted as the sampling technique for this study. The reliability coefficient for each of the variables is 0.99, 0.98, 0.99, and 0.98. Data collected was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings revealed that, data gathering skill was more common with the highest mean, while other skills such as data storing, data processing and data visualizing skills 
were not common. The study concluded that data literacy skills of health information management professionals are low. In the shed light of this, the study recommended that organizational heads of tertiary hospitals and regulatory bodies should promote data literacy skills that will improve the quality healthcare data.