Nursing Education or Nursing Informatics?

[nurseontheway]

I would like to get my Master's degree but am undecided on what to choose. I have thought about education but have also considered informatics. At this point in my career I am still happy taking care of patients but know that I won't feel like this forever. How do you know what would be a better fit?

[Veldtor, BSN, MSN]

So I am starting my MSN in Informatics at WGU September 1st! I also struggled with this decision of what path to take. At the end of the day, I decided that informatics was the better choice for a few reasons.

1. As long as you have a masters or higher, you can teach at many universities as adjunct faculty even if your degree isn't education.
2. Informatics is only going to grow as a field as technology becomes more and more advanced and integrated into our lives.

3. For me personally, I love technology. I want to help develop the next EPIC system. I have ideas for healthcare related software as well.

4. I feel like informatics is probably the least popular route, meaning the most opportunity to grow in that field.

[Hoosier_RN, MSN]

Depends on where you live. I know that I started with Informatics, but jobs are on the coasts and large midwest cities (Chicago and larger). Small towns outsource or are covered by large hospital systems in large cities...and my mentor was honest enough to help me verify that when I started. She did suggest moving. Not an option. So keep in mind that location will have limits.

And yes, the field is expanding, but with the automation that it brings, fewer people are needed to work with a system.

I have a MSN from WGU Leadership/Management, also have a bachelors in computer science (programming), and in my rural area, would not have landed any kind of Informatics job, even in Indy. I'm not trying to steer you away or crush any dreams, but want you to look at the market realistically. I've seen (within the last month) 4 different posters (St Louis; Kansas City, KS; Omaha; and Memphis), who had the Informatics degree and couldn't find jobs because of the limited availability of said jobs.

Educate yourself to make the best choice possible, and good luck. Congrats on making the decision to further your education!

[415RN, BSN, RN]

And speaking of realism, It's Epic, not EPIC, OP. It's not an acronym It's a word. And there's not going to be a next Epic, Judy Faulkner has first mover advantage, she's strategic and widely adopted. Better to learn to work with Epic than to imagine you'll build the next one.

[Veldtor, BSN, MSN]

On 7/27/2019 at 12:11 PM, 415RN said:

And speaking of realism, It's Epic, not EPIC, OP. It's not an acronym It's a word. And there's not going to be a next Epic, Judy Faulkner has first mover advantage, she's strategic and widely adopted. Better to learn to work with Epic than to imagine you'll build the next one.

Yes Epic. Thank you for your extremely HELPFUL input to this thread.

Who are you to say that I won't create the next generation EHR. You don't know what the future holds, you don't know me, and you also misinterpreted what I said. Epic is not going to just stop improving their systems, doesn't seem like a good business model. There will be new iterations of Epic in the future, and I want to help develop those next generation systems.

[Veldtor, BSN, MSN]

On 7/14/2019 at 1:19 PM, Hoosier_RN said:

Depends on where you live. I know that I started with Informatics, but jobs are on the coasts and large midwest cities (Chicago and larger). Small towns outsource or are covered by large hospital systems in large cities...and my mentor was honest enough to help me verify that when I started. She did suggest moving. Not an option. So keep in mind that location will have limits.

And yes, the field is expanding, but with the automation that it brings, fewer people are needed to work with a system.

I definitely agree with you on this! Location is key to this field.

Thankfully, I live in NYC and already work for a biotech company that does clinical research. They have developed an in house systems for streamlining and improving study enrollment, and data collection for the studies themselves.

I also have already been a superuser through two different EHR system implementations at a large urban hospital.

Automation is an interesting topic, but I believe while jobs will be removed because of it, there are jobs created to manage those autonomous systems as well. So as long as you prepare yourself well and make yourself flexible, you should be able to make yourself somewhat marketable.

[Hoosier_RN, MSN]

Automation wasn't the correct word, but I do know that while 20 jobs may get wiped out, only 2 or 3 created to manage the software and systems environment. I've lived it...