What do CI nurses do?

[morganmRN]

If you had to describe in just a few sentences what Clinincal Informatics nurses do that would be enlightening to non CI nurses, what would you say?

[rninformatics, DNP, RN]

Ewwww what a wonderful question!

Clinical Informatics nurses are responsible for insuring clinical input is sought and reflected in decision-making processes related to planning, selection, design, use, evaluation of clinical information systems technologies as applied to patient care and clinical practice.

Sorry about the long sentence.

Or we could just use the ANA/ANCC definition of Nursing Informatics which reads:

Nursing Informatics is a specialty that integrates nursing science, computer science, and information science to manage and communicate data, information, knowledge and wisdom in nursing practice.

[Akeos]

What does a informatics nurse do in day to day practice?

[rninformatics, DNP, RN]

Good question Akeos,

It all depends on the informatics nurse's specific role. Please utilize this Forum for the wonderful resource it is and read a few of the many posts from practicing informatics professionals.

Also if you scroll down to the bottom of the forum. The string entitled: A Day in the Life will give you several different "days in the life" of practicing informatics nurses.

Good Luck!

[TheGuestNurse]

Really the job responsibilities of an informatics nurse vary from organization to organization.

I can tell you what I do as an informatics nurse.

I am the system administrator for a home health EMR. I troubleshoot bugs and problems in the software and request fixes and enhancements from the vendor (this is most of my job and requires at least 20-30 hours per week). I also work to eliminate paper in as many places as possible. I help to ensure that CMS guidelines and documentation standards are met by keeping up to date with the information. I also dabble in billing, since I support an off the shelf software almost entirely by myself, I do it all. There are other informatics nurses and specialist who support the acute software.

[HeatherD]

TheNerdyNurse, I would sure like to be in touch with you if you are still working with Maestro.

[TheGuestNurse]

I do :).

[jennysey]

I was hired from the ED to be the ED Analyst at my facility. We are 300 beds acute care, 34 bed ED. We are 15 months into our implementation project, going live on 7/1/13. I have designed, built, tested and now helping the education team write the training for the new ED system. It has been the best job of my life! I built a tracker board, the nursing documentation, the doctor's documentation and the order sets. Informatics is the coolest job ever, in my book. And I agree with what everyone has said: it depends on where u work and what u do. We have a guy that only does RAD, analysts that only do LAB, Clinical Documentation, Physician Documentation/Order sets. Some people are contractors and travel every week to the site to be there Monday-Thursday.