Need Your Expert Advice

[NurseDiva04]

I have almost 25 years of experience in Information Technology which includes programming, project management, network administration, and management along with MS in Computer Science. I will complete my requirements for BSN in a few months, September. I worked for about 3-4 years in hospital environment during project management, technical support, implementation of clinical application, etc.

My question is: Do you think I will need to work bedside for 1-2 years before embarking on a Nursing Informatics Career? It's been 6 years since working in IT in a hospital, however, only 5 months since working in IT. Currently, I am working in a hospital as a CNA. I don't want to do pure IT, I want to combine the 2. I would pick up a couple of weekend shifts part-time to keep from losing my nursing skills.

What's your input??

Thanks!

[perseus29]

My question is: Do you think I will need to work bedside for 1-2 years before embarking on a Nursing Informatics Career? It's been 6 years since working in IT in a hospital, however, only 5 months since working in IT. Currently, I am working in a hospital as a CNA. I don't want to do pure IT, I want to combine the 2. I would pick up a couple of weekend shifts part-time to keep from losing my nursing skills.

What's your input??

Thanks!

Hi there...

When you say you want to combine the 2, what do you mean? You want to get a job that combines both? As for myself, I worked as a nurse for 7 years, and during 2 of those years I had an IT job that was not related to healthcare. I worked maybe a shift a weekend just to keep my skills up, and honestly, even after that, I wasn't as fast as I used to be when I was working as a nurse 100% of the time. Currently, I have quit my nursing job and all I do is informatic, and If i were to be put on a nursing floor, I would still be able to function, but I wouldn't feel so confident with my skills,and thus, I hope I dont have to go back to nursing cause it would be tought the first couple of months :)

If you want a job that has both--nursing and IT---then maybe you can work at a hospital where you can work on as a nurse, while at the same time helping out with an IT project; I know couple of nurses that do that, but more and more, they seem to be gettign away from the nursing piece cause handling the IT project is too time consuming and their pay is not going up! As far as losing the nursing skills----they might get rusty like mine are now, but I'm sure that If i had to do nursing once again, and I went to work 5 days a week for 2 consecutive months, I would be back to normal. cheers!