Question for Nurse Informaticist

WorkinperthAus · Jul 5, 2012

i'm currently a staff rn in an rn-bsn program taking a graduate level informatics course. i have to write a short piece on the following topic, and because my facility does not have a nurse informaticist (we are are still on paper) i would be very grateful if a nurse informaticist here wouldn't mind typing an answer to this short "interview"
1. as a nurse informaticist, do you report to the nursing department, to the it department or do you have another reporting relationship? what type of facility do you work for?
2. what are the advantages and disadvantages of your reporting relationship?
thank you.

hi, not sure if this will help - but i work as a clinical audit nurse and as such report to the clinical risk manager and the director of nursing. my job is non clinical in that i don't deal directly with patients but do have to do extensive chart reviews and policy review. the information i use is gathered both from internal it systems and the financial / admin side of the hospital and also directly from medical staff. the hospital in which i work is around 300 beds acute med surgical with an ed and we see over 41k pts per year so the reports i write can involve up to that many cases but usually am dealing with specific incidents and or groups of patients in the hundreds.

the biggest challenge in the job is getting information from hospital specific it systems into excel (of which we are also still using the 2003 version) as there is not an easy way to export information from multiple systems to cover what is required. assistance from the it department is often restrictive as describing what is required in a report from a clinical perspective to an it specilist does not always go too well.

very brief answer, and hope it helps, david.

stephenfnielsen · Jul 8, 2012

Currently we report to IS (IT), previously we reported to nursing admin. In nursing informatics we live in both worlds and there have been pros and cons to being in both departments. We've received a greater level of technical trust reporting to IS, but have lost some of out contact with nursing leadership.

33762FL · Jul 13, 2012

Thank you both for sharing information about your role with me, it's been extremely helpful and interesting. I appreciate your contributions very much :)

donnzo11 · Jul 13, 2012

Hello. I am an Informatics Nurse Specialist in a 440 bed community teaching hospital. We are a department of 10, and we all report directly to the Director of Clinical Informatics. The Director has a dual reporting relationship, to the Chief Nursing Officer and the Vice President of Quality and Care Management.

There really are no downsides to this reporting relationship. We are a very close knit group, and are all involved in many of the same projects. Our director has an open door policy, which means we can talk to her at any time. She also gives up autonomy on our projects, yet wants to be kept informed. I hope that this helps.