technology and health care

JustaGuyRn · Apr 26, 2012

This is an old post but I have something to add so I'm resurrecting it.

There are needs for informatics in every sector of healthcare. People who enter it usually specialize in one sector: hospital, home care, LTC, ambulatory, etc. I would capitalize on the experience you have -- nursing homes and look for work for companies that service them.

I am starting my second career in nursing. My first career was as a programmer analyst and I had a stint implementing a patient charting package in a major hospital a number of years ago. There are fundamentally three types of Nursing Informatics jobs: 1) Implementing specialized "vertical" software for a large healthcare organization like a hospital, home health agency, or insurer 2) performing quality improvement surveys, analyzing the data, and trying to effect change from that data 3) pure clinical research with the objective of publishing an article.

Nursing informatics requires one to be a combination nurse and systems analyst (see Systems analyst - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). People who are systems analysts typically have Bachelors in Computer Science, Masters in Information Systems, or an MBA with an emphasis in Information Systems. First "hell year" jobs were for large consulting companies such as IBM, EDS, or the big accounting firms impementing a number of systems for clients involving lots of travel. A lot of this work is going offshore to firms like Tata Consulting. Because you have a BSN you get somewhat of a "pass" and are exempt from a lot of formal training requirements. But then again you aren't admitted into the "tech inner circle" either.

Skills needed for Nursing informatics are: heavy project management, strong interpersonal and negotiating skills, ability to simultaneously look at the detail and the 30,000 ft view. Knowledge of databases and structured query language (SQL) is a strong plus but not required. While many nursing informatics departments are controlled by nurses they invariably report up to departments that aren't.

Work is very project-oriented. At the beginning of the project time committments are light. At the end of the project, time committments are insane -- 24 x 7, nights, weekends, no backup, chief of staff at the other end of the phone on a weekend screaming, "I don't have time to tell you what the problem is, I just want it fixed -- NOW!" There is none of this 3-days-on-4-days-off-hand-off-your-work-to-the-next-shift business. In the systems world there is no "nursing priorities" saving the rest for the next shift. Everything is important or the system doesn't work. If you do research, your paycheck is not guaranteed, you have to write a grant for your salary. Grant not funded = you don't get paid.

No patient contact, many warring constituencies, high expectations.

Full disclosure: If I am not painting a very rosy picture it's because I flamed out of this career and decided to go into nursing. The positive things I can say about it, if you do manage to successfully implement a system or effect institutional change from quality measures you will be the institution's hero/heroine and your career will be catapulted into the stratosphere with promotions and consulting opportunities (that are even more high-stress). Seriously, you will also be on the cutting edge of healthcare and provide a tool badly needed by many organizations. If nurses don't provide direction, the BCSs, MISs and MBAs will -- and it won't be particularly relevant to our world.

This is a long post that basically encapsulates the first 20 years of my career. If you have more targeted questions perhaps I can respond more succinctly.