Just 10 years ago if someone told you their job title was Clinical Project Manager for Nursing Informatics or Clinical Informatics Specialist, you probably would have starred in it and said “What?” This specialty of nursing has exploded over the past decade and will continue to grow as nursing moves into the realm of information technology.
What is nursing informatics?
A nurse informatics is a person who engages in activities that focus on information methods and technologies for nurses, combining information science, computer science, and healthcare to create the resources, devices, and methods required to improve information securing, storage, retrieval, and use in healthcare. This helps nurses to effectively manage data in direct patient/customer care.
What do nurses working in informatics do?
Their job responsibilities vary – they could include being a project manager, health information manager, assisting or designing the program for nurses, educating nurses on how to use the program/software, writing training programs or implementing clinical information systems for an organization. HIMSS and the American Nurse Informatics Sites are two great places to go that provide information on the nurse informatics role, career guide, associations, PMC, and much more.
Careers in Health IT
- Acute care facilities
- long-term care organizations
- Private companies or sellers
- Education/training programmes
- Freelance as an independent contractor in several different fields (to name a few) – software designer, educator, writing continuing education, courses, and consulting.
Below is a list of some of the job titles you may see is the Nursing Informatics (NI) job.
- Implementation specialist
- Clinical Analyst
- project manager
- RN – Information Systems
- Informatics specialist nurse
- Clinical nurse consultant
- systems analyst
salaries
Salaries range from $60,000 in long-term care facilities to $127,000 in counseling. I see this field as having great potential for nurse entrepreneurs.
If you have a background in HI Technology and are interested in this area of Go for it! As the healthcare industry transitions to electronic health records, nursing informatics will continue to grow and will be in high demand.
Nurses will be the best resource for this new age of technology.
They will play a huge role in health care reform, developing the software we use and the equipment that is so important to our profession and the safety of our patients/customers. The more nurses learn about this new technology, the better they will be doing our jobs effectively.
