Entry Level Positions

rninformatics, DNP, RN · Mar 8, 2010

Greetings Eric,

I have to disagree with your paper's premise. In fact one of my recent posts sites the fact that hiring managers prefer HIT workers with healthcare experience.

https://allnurses.com/nursing-informatics/health-employers-more-459533.html

Any position that specifies its an "entry level" position is probably a "good entry level position for an RN making the career shift" Any position that the hiring manager is willing to fill with an inexperienced clinician or RN making the career shift is a good entry level position.

Roles/positions such as Informatics Coordinator, Clinical Analyst, Informatics Nurse, Clinical Applications Specialist, etc can be "entry level positions" or not...............it all depends on what the organization is looking for and if they are willing to train/mentor a HIT novice or not.

Now "skills/qualifications" that a clinician needs to get into informatics.........that I can speak to.

The ability to manage change well, the ability to help others deal with change well, the ability to think outside the box, a life long learner, proficient in MS office, experience with MS Project, Access and or Visio also wouldn't hurt; knowledge of basic principles of change management and databases, an understanding of process redesign, a good teacher, excellent assessment skills, the ability to see the big picture, a good enterpreter, a leader, a good communicator, emotionally and mentally flexible, a problem solver, proactive. There thats a start. Good Luck with your paper and your education!

Angela

Hey All,
I'm a RN enrolled in a heath informatics MS program. I'm writing a paper analyzing entry-level informatics positions for RNs and the skills required for each position. I'm basing this paper on the difficulty for RNs to get health informatics positions over traditional IT/tech people. Does anyone know what are maybe 4 or 5 good entry-level health informatics positions for RNs making the career shift? My plan is to search job listings for each of these positions and analyze what skills/qualifications are required. I've been to the informaticsnurse.com forum, but it's hard to tell what is a good entry-level position for an RN.
Also, any other input from personal experience about any skills/qualfiications/certifications/classes/etc. advice that an RN could use to get into informatics would be helpful. My paper isn't due until the 17th.
Eric

hanginglimbs · Mar 8, 2010

Thank you for your answers. Any programming languages, certifications, other software/hardware knowledge, or other "official" (as in "knowledge of SQL" as opposed to "works well in a team." And what I meant by my paper's premise is that a company is more likely to hire a tech guy with no healthcare experience than a healthcare worker with no technical experience. Informatics programs, however, are looking for healthcare workers as opposed to tech guys because they feel it is easier to teach the technical skills than the healthcare knowledge...this is how it was explained to me anyway.

rninformatics, DNP, RN · Mar 8, 2010

Thank you for your answers. Any programming languages, certifications, other software/hardware knowledge, or other "official" (as in "knowledge of SQL" as opposed to "works well in a team."
It all depends on what the position requires. The same can be said for certifications and ususally experience with programming languages is a requirement of a job that has "programmer" in the job title. A job that requires you have experience or knowledge with programming languages is not an "entry level" position.
If a clinican had SQL knowledge I doubt if he/she would be applying for an "entry level" clinical informatics position. But hey anything is possible. If the position is for a Project Manager lack of SQL knowledge is not traditionally part of the skill set for this role and few organizations are willing to risk hiring an inexperienced clinician (or anyone inexperienced in project management, for that matter) into a project manager role. If the position is for a analyst or a database analyst then yes maybe SQL is a required skill.
And what I meant by my paper's premise is that a company is more likely to hire a tech guy with no healthcare experience than a healthcare worker with no technical experience. Informatics programs, however, are looking for healthcare workers as opposed to tech guys because they feel it is easier to teach the technical skills than the healthcare knowledge...this is how it was explained to me anyway.

Again in MHO I disagree, as a former HIS hiring manager I disagree and as an experienced informatics clinician, I disagree.

What type of "company" is more likely to hire a tech guy with no healthcare experience? You are saying a hospital IT/IS dept has a position for a clinical analyst and they are more likely to hire a "tech guy" than a clinician without IT/IS experience? That has not been my experience these past 10+ years practicing in Informatics. It is easier to teach a clinician IT/IS skills than it is to teach a "tech guy" healthcare, thats why the clinician (that I used in the example above) would secure the hospital IT/IS role over a tech guy with no clinical knowledge/experience. Informatics degree programs hire as instructors (to my knowldge) clinicians with advanced degrees + who are also experienced clinicians and experienced informaticists.

Mission · Mar 8, 2010

I'm an IT person who became a nurse and I have been working in nursing informatics for several years now. I have to agree with Angela on this one. If a job is truely a nursing/healthcare informatics job than it's the domain knowledge of nursing/healthcare that is essential for that position, not technical skill. A network administrator who works at a hospital does not work in healthcare IT, they're just doing IT in a healthcare setting. They don't need to know much of anything about patient care or hospital workflow. Whereas a nurse informaticst doing a product implementation would need to know all those thing but would require little to no technical skills. As you state in your original post, you should look at job postings, even in mid-level positions, most NI jobs I have seen require very little technical skill. Look at the job bank on the ANIA-Caring website to start.

hanginglimbs · Mar 11, 2010

Thank you both for your informative posts. I think we're I'm being led astray are two areas: 1) I am in a "health" informatics program, not NI program. I know for some institutions that is pure semantics, but I'm one of the few clinicians in my program. The majority of them have either business or CS/IT undergrad work. They all work for either Partners Healthcare, Meditech, or one of the other big HIT-associated companies in Boston. 2) Most of the jobs I have looked at have been on the technical side of HIT, such as a systems analyst or actual programming.

Your posts have not only helped me with my paper, but hopefully with my job search as well! Much appreciated!

POSIGIRL · Jun 7, 2012

Hi Eric. I am not making any deadline for your paper but, I would like to respond. I am a 20yr RN completing my BSN and wanting to begin my final area of practice in NI. In all my years of nursing I've never specialized because no area moved me to stay like the area of NI. It is very daunting on how to begin a NI career, because the level of TECHNOLOGY EXPERIENCE REQUIRED is varied; some advice I've been given is become a superuser, get your MSN in NI, several NI RN's have reported getting "lucky" to get on the job training.

I was recently denied an advertised position with my hospital as an Epic Analyst-no experience required. I will keep trying and formally educating myself to get into this growing area of professional practice. I am told the gold standard is the nursing knowledge RN's possess about what realistic, quality patient care is.

mariafh · Jun 7, 2012

eric, i can understand where you are coming from, i think. if you look at hit through all of its environments, not just the hospital, but also the vendor including field and factory, the government, etc, what you say makes sense. in the world of healthcare it, i often seen a strict divider in positions. there are positions that require you to be a clinician but with some it. these are the position who require you to have a healthcare license and experience as a clinician. these are the positions that most informatics nurses hold in the hospital environment and represent the career direction of most people in the nursing informatics specialty. there are other positions that require you to be a strong it skill set and would like you to be a clinician if possible. these are closer to the technical side such as system developer, usability engineer, system analyst, etc. they really need a strong technical background to develop/design/analyze systems and do not do system implementation/training/project planning. positions are one or the other. so which position you try for will tell you who you are competing against. if it is the "required clinician", you will be competing against candidates with strong clinical background, a formal healthcare education, and some it background. if it is the "required technical", you will be competing against those with technical degrees who may or may not have healthcare. because of my technical degree and this was 25 years ago, i looked for a technical position many years ago, involving system development (programming), design, and usability. if they saw the "nurse" on my resume, even when i had a ms in computer science, they often asked me can i do programming. again, the divider between the two types of positions. in the vendor community, if a company is looking for a software engineer to do system design/implementation, they will pick the one with a computer science degree/experience over the informatics nurses. because that is what they are looking for. the technical positions are rarely listed with the healthcare positions or even on the himss jobmart. they are listed along with all other technical positions, like on monster, under system developers/software engineers. they are also filled often by head hunters in it, not healthcare. which side the divide you land on will determine where you look for a job and who your competition is. if you are looking for a technical position, then you need to find positions such as entry level system analyst/developer. the kind of position they give new college hires out of technical school.