Leaving Healthcare IT

Specialties Informatics

Published

I was thrilled when I was hired last year by my hospital's IT department to join the Epic team. I went to Epic 3 times to become certified. Then the LONG hours began. Not only are there my personal projects, there is the upgrade to the next version. I am on call every 5 weeks. There is no sleep that week. There is work on holidays and weekends because someone is always on call. I earn more per hour than I did as a nurse, but my salary is diluted by so many hours. I work WAY more than 40 hours. A colleague at a different hospital in the area said it is the same everywhere in this city. He was recently called in to an "all hands" meeting on Saturday night because a doctor was in a snit about something. After 4 hours (midnight) it was determined that this could wait until Monday. There is high turnover in my city in Health Care IT among the hospital groups. I've had enough. I am ready to be paid for every hour I work! I want to go home and forget about work until the next time I work. Not possible in my current position. In my opinion, salary can be a ripoff.

Specializes in informatics for 10 years.

I've worked in these type of environments before, and it is definitely detrimental to the morale, to your health, family life and everything else.

In these places, it seemed like management never had the guts to say, enough is enough, so they were always trying to implement too much in too little time, and well, that led to many disasters.

At first I stay in these positions cause I needed the experience, but once I got the experience, I was out. Are you able to do consulting? Hours might be long, but at least you get paid hourly.

Specializes in Adult Nurse Practitioner.

A big problem with working in IT as a nurse is that you find yourself not feeling like a nurse. I did IT work for 3 years then said no more...I missed the patient - nurse relationship. I am now completing my goal of NP school. I don't belittle the time I spent in IT, it was challenging, but I am a people person and computers just aren't people enough for me...besides being hooked to a computer 24/7 is really too much!

Your comments are interesting because I am trying to break into the Health IT field. I have a Bachelor's Degree in Nursing and over 25 years of experience which includes various clinical exposures (you do a lot of things in 25 years), Medical review, Medical Policy writing, and my most recent position was Research Analyst for a technology company. I really would like to be a part of the brave new world of leveraging IT to meet meaningful use requirements in the healthcare world. I am also a certified professional coder and have almost completed a HITECH role coorifice. My problem is that all of the companies such as Cerner, Epic, and Meditech requires that you have worked with their product before they will even consider you for hire. It is unlikely that I will be going back to work in a clinical setting which will give me the opportunity to use one of their products. It seems that the IT world has shut out the Health care part of "Health IT". We nurses, physicians, and other clinicians need to be involved in Health IT but slowly it seems that non-clinicians are taking over with no idea of what it means to provide nursing/medical care. Any advice on how I can secure a position as a Nurse consultant with Epic or a similar company?

I would love a job as an Epic analyst. How do I get certified?

What exactly does an IT nurse do? I'm a nurse and web developer for the facility I worked. I developed and managed the facility website. Does this make me an IT nurse? ;)

You could try to apply directly at Epic, located in Verona, WI. I know they hire mostly "kids" right out of college but have also hired seasoned nurses if they are willing to relocate to WI. The "Epic kids" are not clinical. Some of the scenarios written for the training materials are a joke. For instance, one created a surgical history for an OB patient-epididymectomy. Really?? SHE had a testicle removed? This is the type of thing Epic really needs to work on. [h=3][/h]

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