ASN to BS-HIM or RN-MSN NI?

DataJack BSN-RN, BSN, RN · Dec 14, 2020

23 hours ago, littlemamakt said:

Hello! I'm looking for recommendations from those in the industry. If I only have my ASN, would it make more sense to get my BS HIM and get RHIA certified that to get my bachelor's in nursing just so I can get my MSN in Informatics?

It seems like a more direct path to me to get my BS HIM, but I don't know if I'm missing anything. BTW I did search the forum and couldn't find where this has been asked before. Thank you!

Hi there,

I think it depends on what kind of informatics you want to do. I have a BSN and will be completing my MSHI at some point. I am currently in an inpatient informatics team that has both nurses and people with IT backgrounds. The difference between RN and IT is clinical experience and technical experience. In regard to the EHR, RNs focus more on teaching (nurses and doctors) and coordinating while the IT people focus on building the training environment and troubleshooting. Some have the same certification, but mostly it's nurses that focus on clinical documentation. We all have an EHR site support rotation. We also have data analysts we work close with, but they are not part of the Informatics team as they have their own responsibilities.

My suggestion is to ask the Informatics team where you work what their workflow is like. Some nurses on my team have taken a completely IT route and pursued Data Analysis/Engineering, but that is heavily dependent on your skills and experience as well as education. I may also be interested in this at some point in the future.

littlemamakt, ASN · Dec 16, 2020

Thank you so much RuggerKJ! I really like the streamlining, making the process easier, faster, safer. Troubleshooting is also interesting to me.

Is there a particular job title I should be paying attention to in order to find a role like that?

Thank you!

-Kate

DataJack BSN-RN, BSN, RN · Dec 17, 2020

Hey Kate,

Someone once told me that job titles can be misleading and you really have to look at the job description or else directly ask the managers for their own expectations of the job, ESPECIALLY in informatics.

Some common ones you will see are "Informatics Nurse", "Clinical Informatics Administrator/Coordinator", "RN Data Analyst", "Informatics Site Support Analyst" -- something along those lines. Depending on the organization and their particular flavor of EHR and informatics team, many responsibilities will bleed over job titles.

My position teaches end users the EHR (both physicians and nurses in a 1:1, virtual, or classroom environment), runs data reports for leadership, investigates need for EHR changes (big process for this), on-call EHR site support type work like helpdesk/troubleshooting, as well as being a general tech guy for nurses I already have a working relationship with. I literally just helped someone with their iPhone the other day, but I'm able to log it in as productivity.

I'm pretty new to the field, but as you can see, I'm getting my feet wet in all sorts of puddles. The main thing to keep in mind is to always pace yourself, be willing to learn new things, and enjoy the journey.

You'll hear a lot of criticisms like "that's not nursing" and "you're going to lose your skills" or "that job isn't stable." Tune those out to: "Only a nurse can do what I do. I'm gaining a new set of skills on top of my clinical experience. I'm further along in my career than I would be otherwise because I'm doing what I like to do."

SpEdtacular, MSN, RN, EMT-P · Aug 20, 2021

I agree. The best degree depends on what you want to do and job titles can be tricky. My official title is Systems Analyst-RN. I build and maintain the workflows for the ED portion of our hospital's EHR. I absolutely LOVE what I do, but many people would find what I do tedious, boring, and difficult. I didn't want to do bedside nursing anymore, so now instead of taking care of patients, I take care of my end users by giving them tools that makes their jobs easier.