Human resource capacity for information management in selected public healthcare facilities in Meru County, Kenya

INTRODUCTION: Reliable health information is essential for decision making in the healthcare system. Information management in Kenya was considered the weakest area under the Health Information System pillar mainly due to inadequate health workers capacity. The study therefore aimed at assessing health workers skills and current training needs for information management in the selected healthcare facilities. METHODS: Cross-section research design was adopted and both purposive sampling technique and censuses were used to establish the study participants. Analysis was done using SPSS version 20 and results were presented in tables, charts and graphs. RESULTS: It was established that capacity building was usually undertaken through on-job trainings i.e. 85.1% (103) health workers had on-job training on filling of data collection tools and only 10% (13) had received formal classroom training on the same. Further, only 9.1% (11) health workers had received information management training while 90.9% (110) had not received such training. Health workers demonstrated below average skills on information management i.e. only 17.4% (21) could check for data accuracy, only 16.5% (20) could compute trends from bar charts and only 16.5% (20) could transform the data they collected into meaningful information for use. CONCLUSION: The researcher recommended that healthcare facilities management teams develop a competency based framework for defining the desired skill mix for information management and have a yearly Training Needs Assessment for assessing training needs for information management among the health workers.