starting salary to annual salary?

I live in the Los Angeles area. My starting salary was 90K with previous implementation experience. Don't have my BSNyet.

As mentioned before, the starting salary and annual salary depends on the position. People are not usually hired into positions called "Nursing Informatics". Some positions require one to be an informatics nurse. Others do not, but being an informatics nurses is extremely beneficial, both to the employee and the employer in these types of positions. The position also determines the requirements for education as well as experience. Some positions may accept less experience (either nursing or informatics). Some positions may accept the minimal level of education. Nursing informatics affects all types of areas from education, research, nursing practice, to software development. Obviously, the salary and educational requirements for a field like education is quite different than nursing practice. The survey from HIMSS is the best place to start. What you have as a background and what your interests are will determine what you need to obtain and what direction you want to go. Although many of the informatics nurses are involved in either hospital based system system selection/implementation/training or vendor system implementation/training, there are many that are not. So there are a wide variety of opportunities beyond these two well known roles.

What is valued more so than a masters in NI is actual experience on a system implementation. I'm not saying don't get your masters degree but if you want to get the most employment mileage out of it, coupling it with actual implementation experience, along with your clinical background would maximize your probability of landing a job quickly. I struggled in getting a job after I got my masters in NI because I did not have that experience at the time. If your hospital or some other local hospital has an implementation going on, join or volunteer to help out. That will really help you along nicely to get your informatics career started.

Good luck and keep us posted.

I am currently a new grad BSN with 5 years experience as a sysadmin/analyst and 4 years webdesign including Java and C programming. I don't know much about the job description of someone with a masters in NI. Does my previous experience relate? What is taught in those programs for NI degrees?

john, you have wht you need for the technical side. However, you will need clinical experience before you will be hired as an informatics nurse.

There is little programming involved, and what you will be doing really depends a lot of where you are working. I'm in a tiny critical access hospital which is remarkably advanced for its size and I spend a lot of my time troubleshooting our ehr (electronic health record) system, correcting user deficiencies , schmoozing the DON into doing what should be done, these past few weeks we rolled out a new module and I split shifts to be there to provide support for the clinical staff, I got the midlevels (you get an MD here for a stroke) using the EHR to which they've had access for ages, I am working on a way to get automatic order entry implemented over the passive-aggressive objections of the nurses who refuse to see that this will improve patient care, I unjam printers, see why the system (AS/400) is hanging - any number of things. I write specs and training plans, manage the policies and procedures (which were a disaster until I wrested into a database) - it will really depend on the place.

Good luck. Get a year of med/surg or other clinical experience under your belt and then think about this.

Greetings john,

The job description of "someone with a masters in NI" or someone without a Masters who practices in this specialty varies from role to role. Just as the job descriptions for those who practice in pure IT varies.
Do a search on Career Builder.com, Monster, Indeed.com, HIMSS' Job Line, ANIA's or AMIA's job sections to see exambles of job descriptions.
FYI, you do not need a Masters to practice in this specialty.
Also don't limit your self to "nursing" informatics - think broader - healthcare informatics.
NI or HI either way you will need clinical practice experience and knowledge of how medicine and nursing are practiced. In order to utilize technology to improve nursing practice and patient care you need to understand both.

To be "good" at an NI role you also need expertise in process redesign, change management and communication skills..........to name just a few of the skill sets. It is easier to teach a nurse IS/IT than it is to teach a techie nursing/healthcare.
NI degree programs focus on the core concepts of data, information, knowledge and wisdom. Additional content (depending on the specific degree program) may include: system life cycle, standards, privacy, security, ethics, data base design principles, decision support, etc. Most programs have their course content on-line and accesible via their websites. If you want to design systems for a vendor yes your programming experience would definately be an assett.
If you want to assist a facility in implementing systems yes your ability to understand from a programmers/webdesigner point of view will relate. I think it will depend on exactly what it is in HIT or NI that you want to do.

I have my BSN, but not my Masters. I make a little over $79,000 a year with a few years experience.

Greetings LaLa thanks for posting!

If you don't mind me asking? What area of the country are you located in and what is your title/role? Please post this info as it may help others when they are negotiating salaries or to get some idea related to geographical location, salaries and roles.

Hi rninformatics! I'm in Maryland. I'm a Clinical Systems Analyst at a community hospital.

Hi, LaLa!