Fw: Career Planning:The Job and Work Roles of Nurse Informatics Specialists

Career Planning
The Job and Work Roles of Nurse Informatics Specialists

The current and future jobs that nursing informatics specialists may hold are evolving, and as such there is a considerable range of titles, roles, work settings and pay scales. Historically, nurse informatics specialists have not always been formally trained. As noted in A New Definition for Nursing Informatics, "A typical career pathway for an informatics nurse (has been): The nurse in a hospital is hired to help implement a nurse documentation system in that organization. After gaining some implementation experience, the informatics nurse may be hired by the vendor of that product to install systems at other hospitals in the region or nation. These positions require travel away from home up to 100 percent of the time. With experience at multiple sites, the installation specialist may then work for a consulting firm advising clients how to implement the system." More and more, this pathway will change, as formal education becomes more widely available, and more important.

Job Outlook
Healthcare organizations are increasingly installing clinical information systems in response to both competitive market pressures and recent evidence on errors in medicine. These organizations recognize that nurses, in fact all clinicians, are important team members in the process of IT conception, design, installation and maintenance. This field will be one in which continued demand for trained specialists will be the norm.

Job Roles
Some of the areas in which specialists can work include patient education, nurse education, project management, system design and development, information technology consulting, system selection and implementation, and research. Some representative examples include:

• Clinical nurse informaticist Likely hospital-based, and known as a clinical nurse analyst or clinical informatics specialist. Typical responsibilities include data collection, outcome reporting, designing and managing clinical databases, creating quality surveys, creating communications using desktop publishing, and designing forms.
• Nurse analyst An analyst may have little or no patient contact - instead they concentrate on the work processes, understanding how to improve them using technology and data management concepts. A component of the role involves education of clinicians in information system concepts and, conversely, educating the technical people about health care.
• Nursing administrators Manage department finances by using software that provides for budgeting and cost accounting. Staffing, scheduling and resource use can be managed with computer programs. Office automation incorporating word processing, electronic mail, spreadsheets, presentation graphics and databases make the work easier for the nurse administrator.
• Nurse researchers Access decision support systems, such as knowledge about diabetic care, or maintain information using database management tools. Quality monitoring can be enhanced by documenting risks and incidents. A major emphasis now is on the use of technology to prevent medication errors by having the ordering provider directly enter an order into the computer system.
• Nursing Informatics Educators Utilize technology-driven instruction for both nurses and clients. More and more online classes are being conducted using the Internet. Nurses can obtain bachelor's, master's and even doctoral degrees using technology. Computers can help to manage the data surrounding courses such as registration, maintenance of student grades and course certificates.
• Executive Health information Manager coordinates all information management functions across the enterprise that encompass the quality, appropriateness, retrieval and analysis, and security of patient-related and other enterprise data.
• Data quality improvement expert implements methodologies known to improve data quality that are required in today's healthcare environment.
• Information security expert designs, implements and/or maintains an information security program that balances requirements of privacy, integrity and availability of data.
• Information resource planner employs systems and strategic planning, integrates and maintains information resources, understands acquisition and implementation of systems.
• Data analyst/research specialist employs skills in data retrieval, data mining, modeling and statistical tools for analysis of healthcare data.
• Information systems user liaison understands vocabulary of the healthcare professional, serves as the human interface between the healthcare professional and systems professional with technical expertise, and the systems environment, constructs data models
• Project manager manages the implementation of systems necessary to support computer-based patient record and other systems implementation projects.

adapted from A New Definition for Nursing Informatics

Employers
Work environments for nurse informaticists are also far-ranging. These include hospitals and clinics, home care and long term care, nursing schools, IT vendors and consultants, medical software companies, the pharmaceutical industry, and regulatory/governmental organizations.

Job Titles
Job titles vary quite widely for nurses in informatics, and differing often titles reflect similar work. A recent survey of nursing informatics positions in the US revealed these job titles:

• Nursing Informatics Specialist
• Clinical Applications Coordinator
• Chief of Nursing Informatics
• Director of Nursing Informatics
• Manager of Clinical Services
• Clinical Information System Coordinator
• Director, Information Services
• Clinical Systems Coordinator
• Director, Clinical Information Systems
• Nursing VP for Informatics
• Nurse Consultant
• Nurse Systems Specialist
• Clinical Systems User Project Manager

The American Medical Informatics Association website keeps a list of sample job descriptions: http://www.amia.org/jobexch/jobs/fpost.asp

Salary
While clear data are not available, some authors have estimated an average salary range of $35,000 to $60,000 per year, climbing as high as $100,000 - $200,000 per year for senior consultants with experience. As with most specialty nursing positions, salary is dependent on the hiring organization, the geographic location, job responsibilities and accountability, and the candidate's education and experience.

Nursing Informatics Interest Groups

There are a growing number of professional groups focused on nursing informatics. A partial list is noted here - for more complete information please check the University of Maryland web page at http://nursing.umaryland.edu/~snewbold/skngroup.htm

National Organizations

• American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Nursing Informatics Working Group
• American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing - Informatics Special Interest Group
• American Nurses Association (ANA)
• American Nursing Informatics Association (ANIA)
• Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS)

International Organizations

• International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Special Interest Group on Nursing Informatics (SIGNI)
• Australian Nursing Informatics Council (ANIC)
• Brasilian Nursing Association Nursing Informatics Group at Brazilian Nursing Association
• Canadian Organisation for Advancement of Computers in Health (COACH)
• Health Informatics New Zealand (HINZ) (www.hinz.org.nz)
• Spanish Society of Nursing Informatics and Internet (SEEI)
• Swiss Special Interest Group Nursing Informatics (SIG-NI)