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It was a career-altering day that Linda Goodwin, RN, PhD, will never forget. While working as the manager of a labor and delivery unit in the 1980s, she recalls being told that “according to the computer,” she had too many nurses working on the unit.

“Labor and delivery is my area of expertise, and I knew that we needed more nurses, not fewer,” says Goodwin, who is now the informatics program director at the Duke University School of Nursing in Durham, N.C. “I knew then that if nurses didn’t get involved in informatics, things would not go well for patients and nurses as information technology (IT) evolved.”

Today’s focus on outcomes and evidence-based practice and the national initiative to implement electronic records by 2014 are providing a multitude of opportunities for nurses to flex their clinical muscles in the informatics field.

“Health care has many process-related aspects that an IT expert will never be able to comprehend,” says Ed Stern, RN, an independent nursing informatics consultant and a director of Capital Area Roundtable on Informatics in NursinG or CARING at www.caringonline.org.

Nurses, on the other hand, have an intimate understanding of the multifaceted elements that need to be integrated into health care, such as those from the Joint Commission and Nurse Practice Acts.

They also have invaluable insight into healthcare delivery practicalities, including staffing and work and patient flow.

“Technology works in a linear fashion, but we have to take linear processes and adapt them to true clinical processes. Nurses and other healthcare professionals really are the only ones who can do that,” says Stern.

The right stuff

Many clinical nurses may not typically think of themselves as “pocket-protector” informatics types, but they can be the perfect candidates for career opportunities in the exploding nursing informatics field.

“You don’t have to be a hard-core geek — there are very successful nursing informatics professionals who can’t troubleshoot their own computers, but they are extremely valuable in the informatics industry,” says Stern.

To break into the field, experience in informatics and an advanced degree are not always necessary. Nurses do not need to have expertise in deep computer programming or in building software, but they must have —
• Strong analytical skills
• A willingness and capability to learn to use software products
• An ability to translate clinical needs into system applications
• An ability to apply IT infrastructure to improve the nursing process and patient safety
• Solid communication and team-building skills

Look in-house

Clinical nurses who intimately know their particular hospital and are interested in its information system are often good candidates for informatics positions. Many hospitals are willing to train the right in-house candidate on the job, according to Goodwin.

One example position is that of a trauma registry coordinator, who maintains and analyzes the integrity of trauma and burn registry databases. He or she also coordinates and prioritizes requests for trauma data and prepares quality assurance and statistical data reports.

Responsibilities of other types of hospital informatics positions may involve —
• Selecting IT systems
• Configuring and tailoring IT systems to the facility
• Training providers to use IT systems
• Ensuring consistent use of clinical IT systems
• Developing and refining strategies for advancing clinical computing capabilities

“Anyone can put an information system in place, but the tough part is helping nurses and physicians to use it because it changes the way they work,” says Goodwin. “Expert nurses with clinical backgrounds are terrific with that kind of implementation. We understand principals of patient education and we adapt and apply those further [to IT system education].”

Nursing in a very real way

New nursing informatics roles are being developed at a rapid pace outside the hospital setting.

If you are intrigued by the potential of the informatics specialty but are unsure if you want to leave the clinical arena, Stern offers the following insight.

“Even though nurses who work in informatics may not deliver hands-on patient care, they dramatically impact the clinical care of every patient. It is nursing in a very real way,” he says.

For example, a nurse with years of experience working on a renal unit might be the ideal professional to help develop products and services that impact the care continuum, such as a web product that educates patients on renal failure conditions.

Software and IT companies also are seeking nursing professionals for such positions as —
• Clinical product specialists who develop educational presentations to demonstrate the function and value of software programs to sales staff and potential customers
• Knowledge base designers who collaborate with clients and perform clinical research to determine the correct and most efficient clinical content and work flow design for template building
• Clinical analysis product managers who lead efforts to quantify the impact of a software product and use this knowledge to determine future priorities

For more information about nursing informatics, visit Capital Area Roundtable on Informatics in NursinG (CARING) at www.caringonline.org or the American Nursing Informatics Association at www.ania.org.

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Catherine Spader, RN, is a contributing writer for Nursing Spectrum/NurseWeek.
To comment, e-mail editorNTL@gannetthg.com.

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