Need information on Nursing Informations field

[rhp123]

I'm a pre-nursing student almost finish all pre-reqs. I have a Master in Computer Science. A friend suggest me look at nursing informatics. I know there are direct-entry Master of Nursing in nuring informatics program for people who has a non-nursing degree. But this field is totally new to me. I have some questions and hope some can help me answer here.

1) how is the job market for nursing informatics graduate? I heard job markets are tough for some nurse practioners, but not sure about nursing informatics field.

2) where do they normally work at, hospitals, government, pharmceutical compaies?

3) What is the average pay? My understanding is they no longer have Overtime pay just like most other professionals.

[perseus29]

I would say the job market for nursing informatics graduate is good; the main problem is that hospitals want people with "hospital implementation experience." In my case I had a nursing degree with about 5 years of medical surgical practice. I went back to school to get a comp sci degree and when I finished that, i got a job in a IT company, not related to healthcare. Within 2 years I started looking for "informatics" jobs, and I had lots of interviews with hospitals that were looking for 'informatic nurses'; I thought I did well on interviews, but the response I always got was: "you have great experience but we want somebody that has implemented software in a hospital." Funny thing is that now that i work in the "informatics"field the software implementation is the same as what takes in an IT company, except that there are less regulations-----testing cycles have crazy testing deadlines; testing script would fail a basic testing software class; production changes are made without going thru change control, etc.

Anyway, to get back to ur questions...if you have the computer background, maybe start out working in a hospital that needs IT people; I know colleagues of mine that had no clinical experience, but were good in IT, and learned the healthcare aspect of the project because there was no other choice; they are doing good, if not better than those that have a nursing background, but not familiar with IT.

You can find jobs at hospitals, healthcare software vendors, government (VA hospitals?), and many other types of companies that are involved in the healthcare area. The average pay varies; if you are a consultant with experience implementing software you can make 80+;if you're working at a hospital, it might be a lot less, but then again, you might be the top project manager and also be making a good salary; I don't think there is a set average out there. Bottomline however is that a lot of hospitals are using software that is here to stay for a while.

You are more than welcom to pm me and ask me any other questions.

Cheers!