New RN with some computer experience...

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looking at all my options... I love the flexibility and variety that bedside nursing gives me, but not sure how long I will be able to maintain the OT, and besides I don't want to miss my son growing up... he's 17 mos old right now and it's killing me working so many hours (avg. 60+ per week).

My background is in computers (BS in Comp. Sci) and I did some systems work for a Fortune 500 company for about 2 years. Got laid off in 2002 and decided to go into nursing for the job security. Best decision I ever made. Haven't regretted it a bit the last 2 1/2 years. My problem now is that I am running up against the wall with the number of hours I can possibly work in a week, and I need a better option for increasing my earning potential as a nurse. Informatics seems like a good option for me... only thing is that my programming experience is quite limited and I've been out of the field for a while. I love bedside nursing, but I figure I can always do that PRN if I get REALLY bored. Any suggestions as to where I can start looking at resources? Are there lots of opportunities out there for folks with limited programming and system implementation experience? Thanks in advance for the advice!

Nate

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Any suggestions as to where I can start looking at resources?

I believe I have provided this info in couple of other posts. Does the hospital you work at have an electronic medical record system? If so, maybe you should talk to the people in that department and see what help they need. If not in your hospital, what about hospitals in your area where you live? If that fails, you can look at monster, or hotjobs.com and do a search, on clinical implementation, informatics analyst, clinical analyst, healthcare consultant etc. These are generic terms that might yield jobs in the healthcare field, but could also of course yield jobs in other industries, so is just a matter of playing with a combination of words. You can also look in this website, and go to the forums, and jobs: http://informaticsnurse.com/

As regards to your other question----opportunities for folks with limited programming----There are jobs, but like anything else, you have to go out there, network and search and conquer. I think as a nurse jobs come to you; once you have experience in the 'informatics' field, is the same. Job offers galore.

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Specializes in Psych, Informatics, Biostatistics.
Any suggestions as to where I can start looking at resources?

As regards to your other question----opportunities for folks with limited programming----There are jobs, but like anything else, you have to go out there, network and search and conquer. I think as a nurse jobs come to you; once you have experience in the 'informatics' field, is the same. Job offers galore.

I think whether or not jobs come to you depends on the applications you have been trained in. e7000 the application I know most about is going away so if you goto monster you see only a couple of openings.

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You might be interested in exploring the field of nursing informatics by attending a "WINI" (Weekend/Weekday Immersion in Nursing Informatics).

Please visit http://www.winiconference.net for a description of WINI, and location of upcoming conferences.

We have conferences in CO and VA in September, a possible conference in WI in Nov and a conference in PA in Jan.

All the best,

Kathleen Smith, WINI Faculty

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You might want to look into the IT or IS departments at the hospital where you work... I know where I work, IT/IS is seperate from informatics... with your BS in CompSci, you'd be well suited for a senior analyst position... these are the guys that work with/troubleshoot systems problems, etc. The informatics people(At least where I work) deal more with data collection/analysis and software education. I have some computer education/experience myself, and this is just what I've learned from looking around the job postings at work.

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