Leaving clinical nursing to pursue other jobs in nursing

Being in the nursing industry for over a year certainly makes you understand that the job is extremely physical and emotionally exhausting.  If you have been in the nursing profession for at least a year, it would not be a big surprise whatsoever to understand that you are looking to get out of the profession, or at best find jobs that pay well and aren't as physically taxing on the mind and body.

Probably the most frequently questions I hear is, "I've been a registered nurse for these several years, and I'm prepared to do something different.  Is there in any manner I can use my nursing degree to get a superior job?"

Luckily there are numerous ways out there to generate a respectable income using your nursing expertise.  One of such avenues is getting involved in the informatics field.

As soon as you hear the word informatics you're most likely imagining computers and something nerdy related; but have zero fear, there's no need to be a nerd to be into nursing informatics.

Having said that, are you at ease with dealing with uncertain circumstances? Do you have the cabability to help other peoples deal with  change in their place of work? Are you an excellent instructor?  Do you interact effectively with other people? Are you able to resolve difficulties on your feet?  If you answered yes to any one of these queries then probably you can actually become an informatics nurse.

Nursing informatics, which is different from clinical informatics, as defined by the American Nurses Association (ANA), is a specialty that integrates nursing science, computer science and information science to manage and communicate data, information and knowledge in nursing practice. Nursing informatics facilitates the integration of data, information and knowledge to support patients, nurses and other providers in their decision-making in all roles and settings. This support is accomplished through the use of information technology and information structures, which organize data, information and knowledge for processing by computers.

Generally these types of systems involve electronic medical records or EMR's.  Most health care settings are changing from paper records to electronic records and to do the transition, they need individuals to help out during these implementations.

Nurses bring fantastic skills to the table because they possess the clinical background and they comprehend the workflow of how nursing departments operate.  Getting up to speed on how to utilize a specific electronic application is not so challenging.  The most difficult part of learning about informatics is understading all the processes that occur to implement a project.

Nevertheless, if a nurse has fundamental computer skills, learning these various processes is no more difficult than making it through a nursing clinical.  The work can be demanding, but once in the field, nurses find their own niche, and they can go from being trainers, to analyzing the workflow of a department and how it fits on the EMR, to implementing the application in the hospital.

Lastly, not only is this a solid area of work to get involved, but the pay is good. A nursing informatics salary survey puts the range for candidates starting out in the 50's and with experience the range increases to a possible six salary figure.  Similary, a health informatics salary survey results indicate salary ranges as those in nursing informatics.

Nursing Informatics