Murse901

I worked full-time through my BSN and my MBA with WGU. It can be done. However, your full question was "can [you] work full-time, work towards your bachelors and still have some what of a life". The answer to that is, it depends. If your goal is to finish in one term, then most likely not. Finishing in one term requires a tremendous investment of time, and I would guess that most people are not able to spend more than a couple of hours a day with friends/family while working 8 hours a day at the FT grind, getting 6-8 hours of sleep, and putting in 20-30 hours a week into coursework. If your goal is to finish in two or more terms, it's much more manageable to balance a social life. Your mileage may vary, of course. In the end, you have to decide what matters to you. Is it worth it to put off your friends and family for six months while you put your nose to the grindstone and knock the degree out? If so, don't worry about it and just do it. :)

It's unfortunate that you're only 5 months into your nursing career and are already burnt out by bedside nursing. Perhaps switching to a different specialty (ED, telemetry, ICU, etc) might help? To be honest, you just need more clinical nursing experience. A year on the floor isn't going to cut it. It's great that you have a passion for technology and that you're able to quickly learn how to use your organization's EHR, but that's just not going to be enough. You need to have a strong clinical background to be able to match up the needs of your end users with the technology that you have available. You need a bare minimum of 2-3 years of real clinical experience -- not time as a data analyst -- to effectively work in a nursing informatics role. Further, when you apply for informatics jobs, you're typically going to be up against nurses with 5, 10, 20 years' experience under their belt. Without that experience, you're just not going to be competitive. Again, I'd highly recommend looking at working in other clinical areas. The workflow of a Med/Surg nurse is very different from that of an ED or ICU nurse, and you may just need to move around to find the right fit.

Ah, looks like I totally overlooked the whole-conference packages and just saw the individual presentations at $20-30/each. Oops! I can handle $199 + the $79 membership fee quite a bit more than I can handle $600. Thanks to both of ya! :)

I did check ANIA out. But, it looks like all of their conference CE is $20 a pop (for members) for 0.5-1.5 hours, unless I'm reading it wrong. Not super excited about the prospect of paying ~$600 for CE on top of $79/year for membership.

I'm looking at sitting for my RN-BC Nursing Informatics in December. So, to get ready for eligibility, I need to get 30 CE in NI. I've searched all over, and I can't find a one-stop shop for all 30 hours. I can pay $99 here and get a few hours, $69 there and get a few hours, $299 for a "review course" attached to another 12 hours. But, I can't find anywhere where I can 1) get all 30 hours and 2) not get bent over and pay out the nose for CE. Anyone have a good resource for this? I don't mind paying for CE, but I refuse to get nickle-and-dimed and have to bounce around to a half dozen sites to do so.

I'm completely ignoring the rules and just posting my favorite nursing meme [ATTACH=CONFIG]24556[/ATTACH]

I think it depends on your end goal and the culture of your organization. Do you absolutely love nursing leadership? Get the MSN. Are you considering branching out into non-nursing leadership roles? Get the MBA. Do you want to maximize your marketability? Get both. As for the MS in Integrated Healthcare Management, I would be cautious. The curriculum looks very good and seems to line up with an MHA degree. I think that the information would be valuable, but I think that WGU missed the mark in trying to come up with a fancy-sounding name for a degree. The reason I say this is that HR folks are typically looking for resumes with MBA, MPH, MSN, etc and may not stop to take the time to figure out what an MS-IHM is supposed to be. If you just need it to move up in your current job, go for it. If you're looking to break into another organization, I would go for the MBA.

Speaking as a WGU fan, with a WGU BSN and MBA under my belt, I don't expect WGU to roll out an FNP or a DNP any time soon. Even if they did roll out an FNP, I would expect that it would be limited to a handful of states in the same way that the pre-license RN degree is, because of the need to closely police clinical hours. If WGU does come out with an FNP, I hope that the curriculum is a little more challenging than the garbage that most universities are currently putting out.

I don't even mind the 3P's as part of informatics curriculum. 1) Those courses just make one a better clinician, which is necessary for bridging the gap between IT and providers. 2) It opens the door for a post-Master's NP down the road if one wants to change paths. But Professional Presence, Translational Research, Organizational Leadership, garbage garbage garbage. Even the policy course is unnecessary, because the knowledge will be outdated by the time one graduates. Wrap all of these up into one general professional practice course to touch on the high-level stuff. If you're looking to move up into nursing leadership, I guess the MSN is valuable. I think you'll get more traction in the long run with your MBA. I think if you're looking at a CIO type position, the MS in IT Management paired with the MBA might be better as the CIO deals with a lot more moving parts outside of nursing informatics. Don't get me wrong -- I don't think that the MSN in general is useless. I just think that, in many cases, the programs are poorly thought out. The focus should be, "How will the student actually be able to apply this information in the real world" and not "How many generic courses can we pack in to avoid building new courses". The latter seems to be the case with this new program at WGU. As an aside, I've been on several interviews this year for various leadership and management positions, both within and outside of my organization. I even took on an interim unit manager role over the summer before deciding that inpatient management was not for me. In every single one of those interviews, the interviewers were far more impressed that I had a WGU MBA than with the fact that I was pursuing an MSN in Executive Leadership at a well-known local university. Of course, that may have more to do with the fact that the MBA was complete at the time and the MSN was still in progress. I don't know.

Despite the fact that I have my MSN, I've never been a big fan of Master's-level nursing programs. There's just entirely too much fluff and not enough meat. It's even worse in NP programs, where you get a handful of clinical courses and a bunch of useless theory. Sadly, looking at WGU's offering for this new program, it's just more of the same. Lots of generic fluff and only a few informatics-specific courses. Further, two big areas in HIT are on pace for rapid expasion -- information security and data analytics/reporting. I would think it would be more beneficial for someone interested in a career in HIT to pursue one of those areas, and WGU has a Master's for both. Additionally, you get some industry-recognized certifications that go with both of those. How truly useful they are, I don't know, but at least you get some extra glitter on your resume. You get nothing with the MSN in Informatics, not even a CompTIA Healthcare IT Technician. Speaking as a WGU fan, twice over, I think this was a huge miss for WGU. Poorly planned and implemented, and looks like little more than a money grab.

In my organization -- 14-hospital system in Memphis, TN -- neither an MSN nor a BSN nets any additional pay over an ADN. The only thing the degree gets you is a leg up on the competition. No additional pay for IT experience, either. It all comes down to experience as an RN and how long you've worked for the organization. Entry level NI in my organization is about 65k.

Check PM's

How big is the organization you work for? I think that's going to be the biggest factor in getting a foot in the door. Smaller systems (or worse yet, single hospitals and clinics) will have one or no informaticist. A large system is going to have constant movement in and out of positions. I work for a system that spans 17 hospitals and several hundred practices and clinics, so our EHR department is huge. We recently had a dozen or so analysts leave to go off to consultant positions, which is how I lucked out and got my position.

I'm going back Feb 16th/17th for my last class. I didn't make it to my class this week due to O'Hare getting shut down by snow. We'll have to meet up for a beer in Madison!

Quick update for anyone following this thread. I've spent the last two weeks traveling back and forth for Epic training. The Epic campus is really amazing and, yes, as sweetlilwolf said, the food and coffee is amazing (Magic Coffee ftw). I think I gained 10 pounds while I was there. The classes go fast, but I think the trainers do a pretty good job of reinforcing all of the education and giving lots of opportunity for hands-on work in the training environment. Sadly, my flight for my last class this week was cancelled due to weather, so I'll have to wait until at least February before I'm able to get Epic certified. I'll still officially transfer into the new position next week, but won't be able to actually do any of the real work until I'm certified. I'm so glad I was able to jump onto this opportunity. I wish I had done it a few years ago, but that's just how it goes. Just putting all this out there to say that if you're thinking about going for an informatics/IT job at your organization, pull the trigger now.