Nursing Informatics Specialist: Career, Training, & Certification

Nursing Informatics Specialist

As the capabilities of technology continue to grow, the health care industry has been impacted along with other fields. A new specialty that has arisen as a result, nursing informatics is a way of combining general health care knowledge along with the analysis of nursing data, and communications via computer. These new specialists have a higher level of computer and information technology information than nurses were required to have in the past, and tend to spend their time with database systems or educating others as to their use rather than working directly with patients. They may need to troubleshoot computing needs. These are but a small sampling of the variety of duties that a nurse informatics specialist may need to carry out.
 
Salary Outlook
 
Salaries for specialists have drastically increased in the past 5 years alone. Generally speaking, the more experience and education one has, the higher the pay will be.
 
Average Annual Salary
$83,675
 
Salary Range
$46,750-$103,007
 
Work Environment
 
The majority of nursing informatics specialists will find themselves working in a large hospital setting, or other health care clinical area. However, some other areas that they may find themselves in include health vendor offices, or consulting firms. Their skills are in high demand for a number of reasons, including training other nurses in the use of computer systems or managing information systems within a clinic or hospital.
 
Requirements
 
Even though nursing informatics specialists will not be in direct contact with patients for the most part, they are still required to obtain their registered nurse license. This can be obtained either with a bachelor’s or associate’s degree in nursing from a qualified institution, or with a specialized diploma from a nursing school. Further certification is available as a nursing informatics specialist specifically by the American Nurses Credentialing Center. This will vary by state, but generally there will be a certain amount of continuing education coursework that will focus on computer programs.
 
Career Outlook
 
Because technology and computers continue to experience a huge growth in the world of health care, the demand for qualified nursing professionals who are able to make use of technology keeps growing as well. Unfortunately, most nurses do not undergo specialty training in such basic areas as database systems or word processing. As a result, informatics specialists are expected to grow in demand over the next ten years, as well as the overall health care field in general as the population of the country ages. The high leap in salary, a 23% increase in the past five years alone, points to the future of better-paid, in-demand informatics professionals.
 
Professional Organizations
 
American Nursing Informatics Association
1908 S. El Camino Real, Suite H
San Clemente, CA 92672
www.ania.org
 
American Nurses Association
8515 Georgia Avenue
Suite 400
Silver Spring, MD 20910-3492
Phone: (301) 628-5000
www.nursingworld.org