Please advise ...

[morecoffeepls, BSN, RN]

From another thread in Nursing Informatics: "There are companies out there that specialize in psych software, and those companies are looking for psych nurses because obviously they want experienced people in the field to represent them."

I was hoping to get some help/insight regarding this specialty. Some brief background: I've been a psych nurse since I graduated nursing school almost 3 years ago. As much as I love this specialty, I'm in the process of considering my career options now that I'm about to finish my BSN program. Prior to nursing, I ran operations at a restaurant, was a banker, and had other jobs/careers outside of healthcare. With the whole NP to DNP conversion looming, I'm not as married as I was to that track. I really enjoyed my Nursing Informatics class, and my instructor either has some recruitment responsibilities at her day job, or for some reason thought I would be a good fit for Nurse Informaticist. I understand that it is an ideal time to get into this field for reasons that I obviously don't have to explain to you fine people. I will continue to peruse this section to answer the questions I have, but I thought starting a thread might help as well.

Excuse my laziness/frankness/ignorance/inappropriateness(?), but ...

What salary ranges and opportunities for advancement are there in this specialty?

I do fine at my current position, but I am at a pivotal point in my career, and would like to head in a direction that would a) be fulfilling, and b) be lucrative. The post I quoted really got me thinking is all & I thank you in advance if you would be so kind as to provide some insight.

Thx.

[ikarus01]

Like anything else, salaries in the field vary. People love to pull up this survey and tell you that the average salary in the field is 98k.

I didn't read who exactly got pulled in this survey. For example, were all the people in the north east? Or were the people participating in the survey all in big cities? Did they include rural areas?

My point is that a friend of mine is a recruiter who looks for experienced candidates for different informatics jobs for hospital all over the nation. We have seen salaries range from 50k to 100k+ depending on experience, geographical location, position (managerial vs non-managerial) and even solution being implemented.

Consultants tend to make at least 45/hour and managerial jobs also pay well. But again, you could be a manager at a rural location making 70k (possibly even less), or you could be a manager in Philly making 100k+.

Is the field lucrative? Sure...like anything else, if you're good at what you do, and depending on your skillset, you can make a very good living. Example, if you are a nurse and you can write reports (sql queries), you could do very well out there, since reports is another niche in the industry that is highly sought after.

And I think there is a lot of mobility in the field. You can go from being an analyst implementing a solution, to maybe being a project manager, or a manager of a department or even a director. I've worked for vendors where people move up fairly fast, or they stay in the same position for years. It is up to the individual, but if you show you can shine, then I think the sky is the limit.

[morecoffeepls, BSN, RN]

much appreciated