Is Nursing Informatics phasing out?

[sharebear003]

I prefer an office- type work setting and my hope was to get 2 years of ICU experience through a fellowship and land a job within the hospital system in the informatics department after getting my masters in Informatics.

However I heard that informatics will phase out after all hospitals are computerized and nursing informaticists won't be necessary. One of my mom's coworkers was in informatics and now I hear she's going to work in the Surgical ICU. I'm not exactly sure if the department was shut down but that girl HATED the bedside and I can't imagine she'd go back if she had a choice.

What are your thoughts? Is administration a better choice? Are there non- clinical roles for someone with a masters in nursing administration that's not like CNO but more behind the scenes?

[HouTx, BSN, MSN, EdD]

What??? In my part of the country, qualified Nurse Informaticists are hot stuff!! There are jobs with providers as well as the software companies that make healthcare systems and healthcare equipment companies. The key is in the "qualified"... through certification or formal education.

There is NEVER going to be any software system that is so fabulous it won't need constant care and feeding by the informatics crowd. Ever changing technology & regulations as well as integration of snazzy new features (e.g., voice recognition, biometric seurity, etc) will continue to drive updates. Every time that something changes, the informatics crowd has to make sure that clinicians can actually use the stuff. Nurses are basically the only clinicians who understand how everything works - so a "nursing background" is still one of the most highly sought criteria for informatics jobs. We are the ones who can do the reality check.... "yes, that certainly seems to be a wonderful mobile station, however - it's just not going to actually fit into a normal patient room". It's even better if you have in-depth expertise in a specialty area such as ED, ICU, OB because those areas have unique workflow that outsiders cannot grasp.

So - rumors of the demise of nursing informatics are very premature.

[emtb2rn, BSN, RN, EMT-B]

Going computerized is merely the first step in a system lifecycle. Maintenance, which includes upgrades & modifications, is the true meat of information technology (informatics in healthcare).

So, informatics is not going away but actually growing.