Just 10 years ago if someone had told you their job title was a Informatics Nurse Clinical Project Manager or Clinical Informatics Specialist you probably would have starred at them and said “What?”
This specialty in nursing has exploded over the past decade and will continue to grow as nursing moves into the information technology world.
What is Nurse Informatics?
The informatics nurse is someone who is involved in activities that focus on the methods and technologies of information for nurses, combining information science, computer science, and health care to create resources, devices, and methods required to optimize the securing, storage, retrieval and use of information in healthcare. This helps nurses to manage data effectively in the direct care of patients/clients.
What do Nurse Informatics do?
Their job responsibilities vary- they can include being a project manager, health information manager, helping or designing the software for nurses, educating nurses on how to use the software/program, writing training programs or implementing the clinical information systems for an organization.
To read more about what a Nurse Informatics does check out the Nursing Informatics website – American Nurses Informatics Association.
Nurse Informatics Jobs
- Acute care facilities
- Long Term Care organizations
- Private Companies or Vendors
- Education/Training programs
- Self employed as an independent contractor in several different areas (just to name a few) – software designer, educator or writing continuing education courses and consulting.
Here is a list of job titles you may see for a Nurse Informatics (NI) job.
- Implementation Specialist
- Clinical Analyst
- Project Manager
- RN – Information Systems
- Nurse Specialist Informatics
- Nurse Clinical Consultant
- Systems Analyst
Nursing Informatics Salary
Salaries start at $60,000 in Long Term Care facilities to $127,000 in Consulting. I see this field having great potential for self employed nurses.
In closing, if you have a background in HI technology and are interested in this field, Go for It! With the health care industry moving to Electronic Health Records, Nursing Informatics will continue to grow and be in high demand.
Tina 🙂