Nursing Informatics

Looking for a career change? Nursing has a lot to offer: competitive salaries, great benefits, the ability to make a real difference in other people’s lives. But figuring out where you belong in the field of nursing can be tough. If you have a penchant for numbers, loved your statistics class in high school, or thrive on detail-oriented technical documentation and information digitalization, nursing informatics might be the perfect fit for you!

Keep reading to find out more.

Nursing informatics is a specialty within the nursing field. Its goal is to assimilate information–statistical data from patient treatments and outcomes, for example–to find ways that facilities can provide better care and more effectively manage the wealth of nursing data and wisdom that’s out there.

Nursing informatics specialists work for hospitals, clinics, and a wide variety of other medical care institutions. They have a wide variety of roles, including:

• Working with digital patient records and information programs
• Developing technology to better serve patients and care providers
• Evaluating data to find ways health care providers can improve patient outcomes
• Providing policy change and implementation advice based on the data available
• Helping care providers transition toward more effective electronic health records systems

Every industry needs professionals who can evaluate what’s going right, what’s going wrong, and what can be improved. In nursing, informatics specialists work with the big picture: what are health care providers getting right? What are they missing? What is falling through the cracks?

Nursing informatics specialists are also often the crucial experts who can bridge the gap between care providers and technology developers, ensuring that electronic records are managed effectively and accurately–an absolutely vital part of providing the best possible patient care.

Nursing informatics specialists don’t shy away from precise, detail-oriented work. They enjoy working with technology and strive to optimize digital record-keeping and documentation. Strong communication skills are a must, as you’ll usually work on teams with a wide variety of other professionals to create policy change proposals, solve problems together, and implement changes on a patient-care level.

Nursing informatics specialists start out as registered nurses, so pursuing an RN –preferably a BSN degree–is the best place to start .That means
you’ll have to take the NCLEX-RN test and become a registered nurse
. Some nursing schools offer BSN degrees with specializations in the nursing informatics field; other masters or doctoral programs in nursing informatics accept working nurses who already hold a BSN.

You don’t necessarily have to have a degree in nursing informatics to pursue a career in the field.Some nurses stack a master’s degree in computer science or information management on top of their four- or five-year BSN.

At this time,
there are no specific certification requirements beyond passing the NCLEX to become a nursing informatics specialist
. With that said, the vast majority of nursing informatics professionals out there have at least a bachelor’s degree in nursing informatics or a related field. If you want to pursue this career, your best bet is to collect the skills and experience necessary to meet the requirements for the position you want.

If you don’t have a degree in nursing informatics, that typically means you’ll need to have patient care experience along with a high level of technological acumen and experience in documentation, data processing and evaluation, and working on leadership teams.

Though nursing informatics is a relatively new field, it’s already well-established and rapidly growing. According to a 2017 survey by HIMSS , the majority of nursing informatics specialists working for vendors reported earning $100,000-$116,000 per year. Of those who worked for hospitals,…