Should I look into nursing informatics??

[Es90]

I am a relatively new nurse with 7 months of Bedside experience and I was wondering if I should look into nursing informatics. It sounds interesting and I am tired of bedside nursing already. I'm worried of the lack of experience and job safety!!!

[BCRNA]

Nursing has many areas you can move into if you do not like one area. Informatics does not absolutely require clinical experience, though I find there are fewer open positions for it (in my experience). I would encourage you to check out programs. Also, see the American Medical Informatics Website (http://www.amia.com) to see the diverse job settings.

[ikarus01]

Nursing has many areas you can move into if you do not like one area. Informatics does not absolutely require clinical experience,

This absolutely right. You don't need to have clinical experience to work in informatics. However, be aware that informatics departments are most likely run by nurses and when you go for an interview, some of these nurse managers/directors want you to have so many years of clinical experience.

I have worked in hospitals where jobs in the informatics department require from 1 to 3 years of clinical experience, and actually many lean more to the min 2 years of clinical experience, but some can do with one.

Also, be aware that you will also be competing with other nurses who might have more experience than you, so if we were to line up resumes, most of the times candidates might have the same informatics skills and the candidate with the most nursing experience will be favored, 9/10 times.

Obviously, I have also seen a couple of candidates get jobs in the field right out of nursing school, but each of these times, the candidate already had IT experience and they didn't end up in the "informatics" department run by nurse managers, but ended up in the IT department of the hospital.