Please help me to understand

In answer to your question: "YES"

positively. Our clinical applications nurse serves as liaison between IT and clinical practice. Her expertise is important in building programs, networking and training. Companies selling programs for PDA's need nurses to develop new software (or sell what they have!). If you can help save a facility money on what type hardware and software purchases they make, you would be more than worth your salary (or consultant fee).

What's your first priority? To be a nurse or to be a computer programmer? There are jobs that mix both in nursing and technical positions.

Contact information services at any of your local hospitals.

First pass the NCLEX -PN exam. It would be good to get some clinical experience under your "belt" before you move into the world of informatics. Look at the vendors job postings - you'll get an idea of the kinds of job experience they are looking for. Join a nursing informatics group and HIMSS or AMIA - either are great professional organizations with a broad range of health care and informatics professionals. Start reading informatics magazines - many are online nowdays - so affordable. Subscribe to CIN.

I just saw a news item that Perot Systems has a 6 year, multi-million $ contract to provide integration services to the National Health Services in London. Maybe you'll find an opportunity there.

Talk to the IS Department at your facility. Volunteer for a project - like being a super user.

Good luck
Kathleen

Jascraft - what made you decide to get the LPN in the first place? What type of computer background do you have? Do you have any programming experience. People in the healthcare informatics area come from two directions. They are either clinicians with a speciality in informatics or they are technical people who happen to be clinicians. Almost all of the people in nursing informatics are nurses with a speciality (experience and/or education) in nursing informatics. Very few have technical degrees, but many of they have BSN (RN) or higher. This is understandable because they come into this field as clinicians that have assimulated informatics knowledge. The main focus is they are clinicians. Kathleen is right in saying that you need nursing experience to take on their roles. Informatic nurses work for hospitals to implement vendor systems in their organization, working, some, as analysts. Those working for vendors are often in marketing, learning products, or support. Check out the web page from www.amia.org in the nursing informatics group for job descriptions and informatics links. But if you are more interested in the technical, then you are coming from the other direction and you could get a technical job working in the hospital IT department or for a vendor. It would depend on your technical experience. Check out www.himss.org and their job bank for the type of positions where the technical takes on a greater focus. There is a lot of information out there, and definitely you can combine the two. Good Luck