perseus29

As somebody suggested, if you can do the internship program where pre health students are exposed to direct patient care experience, then do that, as that would be your best way of finding you if direct patient care is for you; if you can't do that, then volunteer at a hospital on a medical surgical nursing floor and pay attention as to what nurses do. I had a cousin that thought of being a nurse and then through her high school, she was able to do some type of program that let her be a nursing assistant; after a month of that experience, she got to see what nurses did, and as she said, 'no way in hell i'm going to be a nurse.' Before that though, all she thought about was being a nurse. So please get yourself in a hospital and look and watch what nurses do, and see if you can handle that. Better to do that, then go thru college and then find out in the middle of your nursing clinicals that nursing is not for you; in my nursing program we actually had about 5 people that dropped out because they didn't like it. Kind of wasted 1 year to find that out.

"Might this be a good field for me? What do you all do on a day-to-day basis?" Yes, this field would be excellent for you. If i were in your shoes, I would clean up the resume, and start sending it out. In this field many times they are looking for a 'techy' person with an RN degree. Is too bad you don't have much clinical experience, as that would only stand out more, but is definitely not a deterrent in looking for a job. I would go as far as saying that you could find a job without completing the online stuff; but it does require the know how of navigating career boards, etc. As far as what is done on a day to day basis----that really depends on the job; there are tons of 'things you could be doing.' As rninformatics said, there are numerous roles; you could be hired as a general analyst, but your role might include configuring the application, troubleshooting the application, training staff, gathering requriements from the users, testing new releases, etc. These are the type of roles that don't use programming, but many times a knowledge of databases is helpful; if there is anything I tell people to do is to enroll in a database class (community college), or get a book and teach yourself how to build a database. Of course, that's if you don't already know how. Is good to understand microsoft access, but I would also learn basic SQL. Also by looking at your experience, I don't see how you haven't applied for other jobs; you have already done the most difficult part of the process and that is, getting a job with no IT experience. Now is just a matter of dusting off the resume and sending it out. Sure, you could sit there and think---well, what do i want to do for my next job? Do I want to be a network person? Do i just want to go out and train people? Do I just want to support an application? However, given the current 'job crisis' you will find a lot of generic jobs out there. Matter of fact, my recruiter friend showed me a list of jobs last week and they were all generic; basically it said, experience building, troubleshooting applications. Granted, it was for a specific software, but the point is that I bet those jobs are a lot more than just building and troubleshooting. And even though they were specific for an application, you can sell yourself by saying that you have traiend yourself in whatever application you're working on now, and that you're a fast learner, etc. Learning applications----all of us can do that. Don't be apprehensive. You're ideal for the field and is up to you when you want to start looking for a new job. If you need further advice on resume or interviewing, let me know; I have tons of experience in that department too. Good luck, and waste no time.

The main thing about these tests is to pay attention to the questions because they will repeat in a different manner, and that's how they catch if you're faking it, or it throws a red flag that you're not being honest. Example questions that get to the same point, but are asked very differently: 1.How often have you had to give up your leisure time to work. 2.If you have plans on a Friday evening and your employer has an important deadline to meet would you cancel private plans? So if you answer question 1 with, 'very often', and then to number to you say, 'not very likely', that throws a red flag. If anything when doing these tests, best thing is to answer the questions consistently, and pay attention to what they are asking because the questions repeat themselves in a different manner.

I've had a similar question in an interview before and my response was: Upon learning that my assigned tasks were not in alignment with my values, I immediately informed my manager about my concerns. I explained to them why the tasks assigned confliced with my values, and I also gave them an alternative solution as to how the conflict could be resolved. Management and I came to an agreement and the issue was resolved. At this point the interviewer could ask about details of the problem, but then You can say that you would rather not divulge such details as respect for your previous employer. Again, that could be also testing if you're the type that's willing to talk bad about your employer so my policy is that when interviewing, is best to speak generically. In my case they were satisfied with my answer. I believe what's important is expressing the fact that you are willing to discuss the issue with management and also you are willing to provide and alternative solution; not just saying, 'sorry, i cant do this because it's against my values.' Also, you don't want to make a choice without informing management about your decision. Gotta keep everybody in the loop as to why you do what you do.

So far NO one has gotten GB from this H1N1 vaccine because trials are just starting. And even if somebody has a negative reaction to the vaccine, I highly doubt the pharmaceutical companies will come out and advertise the fact that somebody got GB from the vaccine; if anything they will come out and say that the person had a pre existing condition. Kind of like the tasers----some people died afer they get tasered, and taser Inc says that it was because of a pre existing condition. Well, would they still be alive if they didn't get tasered? Nobody will ever know.

If you want to do informatics, just start applying and see what turns up. Companies like Epic, Cerner, Siemens, etc, love to brag that they have IT nurses in their staff because that gives them a lot more credibility when going to hospitals and implementing their systems. I was working at a hospital in the houston area that hired 2 CNA's because their background was in computers and they understood the clinical talk. Now, the CNA's were smart enough that when they saw the nurses struggling with the training, they volunteered to help; they got noticed and eventually hired and trained by the hospital in setting up their IT system, and they don't even have a nursing degree per se. If I were you, I would definitely put my resume out there, and start applying for any jobs you see in the area; right now is a tough time to be in the market because I know of two nurses with IT implementation experience, and they tell me that hospitals are right now looking for specific experience; so their experience is in cerner implementations, and in their specific region, hospitals are looking for meditech or epic, and even though they got that IT/nursing backgroudn, hospitals know that if they wait long enough, they will get somebody with that specific experience, so they are not even getting interviews; couple fo years ago it was very easy to get the job. But to answer your questions, yes, is possible that rn grads can start in informatics. YOu just have to put yourself out there and start knocking on doors.

As rninformatics says, consulting businesses are seeing a slowdown from years past. A friend of mine own a consulting company and I'm friends with a recruiter from another place; they both say that there are jobs in specific areas, but not the wide availability thy have seen in the past. Also, hospitals have realized that there is an abundance of talent out there, and now they want specific experience. Where as before they wanted somebody who had lets say specific skills such as somebody who implemented Mckesson or Cerner, now they even want more specialized skills, so you might have cerner experience, but they want somebody that knows Iview, and clients are waiting it out to find that person.... Now, there are jobs out there, and the good news is that if you got an RN degree and experience in the field, you will get an interview; however, is not like before where you got the interview, and the position was easily nailed. Now, there is competition, but unike the IT field, people in informatics are getting interviews. I have a friend that got laid off and he has specific IT experience, and so far, bunch of applications sent, but not even a single call about them. So if you got great interviewing skills, you can find a job....

Thank you so much for your post and link!!!

So did you get any advice? Even though there are a few hospitals in the area, there are two main networks; Seton and St. David's. I used to work in the seton network, and i knew nurses that worked at st davids and came to seton, and those that were in seton and left for st david's. I would stay away from the orthopedic floor at the main seton hospital....they always take new grads, and there is a reason why; haven't worked there in 3 years, and maybe things changed! :)

Does anybody know what's the process to renew an expired texas nursing license? We have looked through the texas board website, and all we can find is the link to renew a current license; we tried calling the board too, but all we get is, 'representative is busy now; please try calling later.' We even left the phone on speaker for 45 minutes while waiting for the representative to come on the line, and even after 45 min, no luck! thanks!

My friend who works as a nurse in Reading (outside of London area), makes 26k a year, and she's been a nurse for 3 years. Salaries in the UK are significantly lower than in the USA, and yet, the cost of living there is outrageous....well, when compared to the USA. I work in IT, and 2 years ago I worked in London; I learned that my company was paying 22,000/year pounds for an entry level position in London; that same position in the usa was being offered $45,000/year; people look at the salary and say, well, thats about right because of the exchange rate; problem is that the exchange rate means nothing because when you work in the usa, do you care about the exchange rate of the uk, or for that matter, the one for europe, japan, or china? All you care for is your total net income that you take home, and how that income pays for your bills, groceries, etc. My point is that salaries in europe tend to be lower than salaries in the usa; another example---my friend works as an engineer in spain and his salary is 35k; the only engineers that make such salaries in the usa, are probably the ones working part time.... My friend says that a salary of 35,000 pounds for a nurse where she works is damn good.....I would expect your salary to drop significantly in the uk, and don't expect the cost of living to drop at all. No clue about germany but you can google 'registered nurse salary germany.'

Just wanted to let you know that you don't have to have an 'informatics' degree to break info the field, unless you are going for one of those roles that is specific for a nursing informatist. AS I have said in many other posts: there are dozens of people doing clinical it jobs that have either no clinical experience, or no clinical background; then there are those clinical people that are doing the jobs and they had no IT experience, except for maybe using email. As you say you are a technology nut, maybe what you want to do is find hospitals that have their RT dept in electronic form; i don't know much about the RT department as I've implemented application for the nursing world. HOwever, in the past when i have searched for jobs, many of the listings said something like: clinical experience such as RN, RT, PT required...As I tell people, many times you create your own opportunities in these fields; if you got clinical experience and you are technology savvy, maybe you might as well start looking for jobs in the field; I just saw one the other day that said the following: Programmer/Systems Analyst III -- Clinical Documentation - Analyst - IS "Supports Clinical Documentation - Experience needed in RT, PT, OT or Speech. Acts as a consultant to user departments to enhance existing business applications and to facilitate solutions to meet business requirements, ensuring that all related applications are consistent with overall organizational strategies." Of course, if your goal is to have an informatics degree, nothing wrong with that; i just want to make it clear that many people are in the field without such degree.

You're right! I quit photoshop when our school gave us a free sample of paint shop pro...photoshop was too much too handle for me! And with excel I stick to basic copy, paste, the function of adding, and some sorting :chuckle ...so yea, excel can be a beast of a monster to master, especially when i see those brave souls extracting data from databases, etc. But knowing excel goes a long way in the it world; it has saved my life tons of times...excel and access combined!

I would venture to answer your question with, yea IT experience is not really necessary, but it doesn't hurt to have it, and it really depends on the specific job you're going for; if you want to do programming for an application used clinically, then of course, you will be required to have IT experience more so than clinical experience. But there are other jobs out there that don't require much IT experience. However, in the last year or so, I have seen a greater number of candidates that have better credentials than I saw in 2005, and 2006 and by that I mean that they have an RN degree along with some other IT experience; with that said, becoming a superuser gives you invaluable credentials towards getting a job in the informatics field. Now, as a consultant, I have gone to many hospitals and I've met the IT/informatics staff, and many times the nurses that volunteered to be superusers got chosen to be put in the IT team; some hated it and quit that role, and others simply loved it and stayed in the team. As they had no IT experience, many had to take some intro database course, or programming course to be able to do their jobs better. Others didn't have much to do with programming so they learned on the fly.... Just 3 months ago we had a nursing assistant who is always doing more than what she has time for, and as nobody wanted to volunteer to simply enter data in the system, she volunteered to do it; 2 months later and now she has been asked to join the IT team doing simple build and troubleshooting tasks. Little does she know that she has a bright future ahead now and all her IT experience prior to the IT job, was excel and photoshop. :)

I don't think a clinical area matters, unless you know of a specific job that requires you to be skilled in a certain area, and your goal is to get that specific job. As for myself, I worked all areas of medical surgical units, and the job I got was implementing an operating room application; I had zero experience in that area, except for maybe understanding some of the post op flow, but ironically enough I got turned down for all the jobs that involved applications in the regular floors that I was experienced on. Of course, there were times when i was on a job search and it would say something like, labor and delivery experience preferred, or emergency department clinical experience required, etc, but not all jobs required specific clinical experience. What you will see the most though is, clinical experience preferred or clinical experience or hospital workflow understanding a plus.... Hence, I would choose to work in a clinical area that you're interested in, and not worry too much about selecting the best clinical experience for informatics.

My first degree was nursing, then it was computer science; i was working for an IT company, and when i was interviewing for clinical it positions, even though i had been a nurse for 5 years, and been doing IT for 2, i always got turned down by interviewers because they would tell me that i had never implemented a project at a hospital; crazy. Of course, i kept on applying and applying, til i finally got a job, so yea, you don't need years of clinical experience, but if you can get yourself on a project at a hospital---maybe as a superuser---then that would give you tons of credibility when interviewing. As i have said in many of my posts, i know many people that got into the informatics field with zero clinical background, but you do have to create your opportunities in this field because many of the people in the field do want that clinical background, but I've worked with many hospitals that have people in the team that have zero clinical background, or they recruited nurses that had zero IT background. Good luck!

Of course it might be too late now, but if you can, take an intro databases course; always comes in handy cause no matter what system you re involved with, you will always find yourself querying data from tables. As far as what to do---do get a year of clinical nursing under your belt; it only adds more credence when you're out there implementing systems. NOrmally nurses get pulled on a project; so lets say you're an emergency nurse, and the department decided to implement an electronic medical record; many times the managers of the floors decide that they need extra help and they go to the most computer savvy to help them out. These 'superusers' or 'clinical leads' learn about the system and might help building the system, so that's how you get the experience. Of course, many other ways to get into informatics, but a lot of my nurse friends started by getting asked to help with testing, or help with training the other nurses, and they enjoyed it so much, that they asked if they could help with other stuff, and eventually they had enough experience to go look for a job implementing systems in other hospitals.

I'm not Gillian, but if the hospital you're working at doesn't have epic implemented or projects going, one way to 'get in' is to scour job boards looking for hospitals that are looking for rn's trying to make a switch into epic implementations; in the past there have been postings from hospitals looking for rns with no experience wanting to get into epic implementations. I must tell you though, those come like once a year---if they come at all. Of course, another way is to inquire through your friends if hospitals in your area have epic, and if so, you might want to find out who their project manager is, or the person in charge of hiring for the project, and then go talk to them and see if they got any openings.... The easiest way of course, is when your hospital has an implementation going on,because then you can volunteer to be a superuser, or volunteer for anything else going on; When I switched from clinical nursing to informatics, I spent 8 months going to hospitals, submitting resumes, networking with my friends and I had experience working at a large IT company; i just didn't have the clinical IT experience implemeting projects at hospitals, but I had implemented projects for non health care related companies. Even then, it took me that long to find a job, but my persistence finally paid off.

Benefits and rewards: I finally felt appreciated for my hard work. As pathetic as that sounds, when I did clinical work I worked long hours, and it seemed that instead of getting ahead, we only got more work and less appreciation. One time I remember volunteering for a 16 hour shift, and at some point i was starving, and since the cafeteria was closed, I snuck in to the doctor's lounge as they kept that stocked with all types of goodies; next day i almost got written up for 'violating department policy' (haahahah). But that's nurses for you. Anyway, I'm glad I left that clinical stuff behind, and even though i miss the medical stuff, you wouldn't pay me high enough to go back to it. I love what I do now, and no more back problems for me; as far as making a difference, well, I have trained so many nurses in using computers that I think i have made a difference in their own personal lives As the cliche says, Just do it, and you won't be looking back. That's a promise.

I've gotten contracts where I work from home for 2-3 months, but that's as homey as it gets. I was just entering data into the system, but really, I was supposed to do that onsite, but then the client realized they didn't have to fly me in every week to do glorified data entry; i could do it from home, but once the building phase of the project was over with, then I had to go back to being onsite. Only way that maybe you could pull it off was to do building or testing for a project, but again, that only goes for so long; if you were a developer, maybe then you could develop from home, but again, i know developers that work at big it companies, and they still have to go in for meetings and such. So the most they do is work from home 3 days a week.

Couple of my friends have, and like any other vendor, it depends what specific role you have; you could be hired as a consultant, and you would go implement their software at different sites in the country; to see what they specifically do, just type clinical analyst or clinical implementation in any job search engine and any of the job descriptions is fair game as to what these clinical rn analysts do; your role could also specifically be support or training, and maybe you wouldn't have to travel.....one of my other friends had to even do the sales portion of the project even though she wasn't hired as a sales person, but was part of the job description. As far as salary, that would depend on the companies, and your years of experience as a nurse, and if you just have an RN degree, or an rn degree with an informatics degree or computer sci degree. You could expect though to be paid starting in the 70k range and going up from there.

I took this from one of the hospitals i used to work at as this position is pretty much standard across any hospital that has implemented a vendor software across any department: # This position will be responsible for providing application configuration support for the (vendor name) applications. # Provide 2nd tier application Support for end user community. # The information systems Analyst will serve as a bridge between the clinical owners of the (vendor software) application and the vendor, participating in software design, implementation, testing and ongoing support. # Provide Enterprise Design Analysis in one of many areas of the organization using workflow analysis to create current and future state requirements as it pertains to the EMR Implementation. # Facilitate Application Development sessions with subject matter experts as needed. # Assists in the planning and coordination of assigned clinical informatics projects. # Actively participates in the design, build, implementation, training, evaluation, testing and maintenance of Hospital Information System. # Coordinates and facilitates communications within areas that interface with the Clinical Informatics # Function as an active participant on the EMR Implementation team; attend training to learn the functionality of the (vendor) modules. # Participate with the implementation team and clinical subject matter experts, in an enterprise design which will represent an improved clinical workflow and eliminates current state paper-based processes, as applicable. # With assistance, reviews and interprets the enterprise design and configures the (vendor) application accordingly. # Participate in unit and integrated testing of the software to ensure that the design objectives are being met. # Assist in problem resolution. # Support the management and documentation of the overall EMR configuration methodology, adhering to configuration standards. # Collaborates with the Process Analyst to ensure the Workflow Redesign is supportable via the configuration of the application.

Yes, it might be that a position requires a master's degree to be in management; I've seen a few hospitals that list a position for management and it requires at least a master's degree; however, I work for a company that has people in management, just with a bachelor's degree. There are exceptions I would imagine depending on how good people are. Matter of fact my manager last year was a 26 year old guy that well, was just incredibly sharp and all he had was a bachelor's degree, and he made it past the monkey building stage. But since the question was what's the easy way to enter, I would still insist that there is a possible easy way to enter informatics. Good luck! :)

I have seen this question asked many times on this board and many answers have been given; you can browse thru the older topics and find them or you can always do a search. But to answer your question....and I disagree with the previous post about not an easy way to enter the specialty... Here is one easy way or maybe the easiest way that I have seen at many hospitals, and hell, i have been to quite a few, and been abroad too, and it works the same way in the USA, London and France: work at a hospital that is using some type of EMR (electronic medical record), and get familiar with the software and maybe volunteer as a superuser. A lot of the nurses I work with in the informatics department started by getting assigned to being a superuser, and since they had no choice, they had to learn the software and eventually they were given the position; they never took any informatics course, or did any computer univ training..... Of course, the common most expensive way is to go to a univ and get trained on healthcare informatics, or nursing informatics. Advantage to this is that maybe you will learn computer terminology, database courses, etc; but you can always learn database on your own and database is essential as sometimes you need to do reports, and if you have this skill, you're golden... Also, you can always apply for jobs, but if u have no experience could be harder, but many companies just love to have a nurse on the staff as they figure they can learn the software later; so maybe thats why is best to enter a hospital that has an emr and get that type of experience. hope that helps!

When I felt that way years ago, I changed jobs, became a travel nurse; I was satisfied for a while, then came back to the same feeling; even though I had assignments I enjoyed, it was just rough to get stuff done; I decided to go back to school, get a different degree, and continued nursing as part time. The school times made me feel a lot better, and once I got a new job with my degree, and I quit nursing, I was back to normal. Then 3 years later in my new job, back to the same feeling, but by then I had an idea what i really wanted to do, and now, I just simply love my job. I would suggest maybe take some time to analyze what is it that you want to do in life, and maybe you will make changes that will make you feel better; took me a while to figure it out, but now, I don't even mind working late. Cheers!