Educational Requirements

In the field of health informatics, technology informs healthcare rather than vice versa, so nursing informatics professionals will always be nurses first. Most enter the field with at least a bachelor’s degree in nursing. Relative to nursing, health informatics is obviously still in its infancy, but reputable BSN and MSN degree programs have begun offering an informatics specialty, and more will likely join them.

A declared concentration or advanced degree isn’t requisite, however: according to a 2011 survey conducted by the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS), 42% of the informatics nurses polled were RN’s, while 41% held bachelor’s degrees. Almost all respondents had at least five years’ worth of clinical experience; well more than half had at least eleven years’ of nursing experience, although the field evolves so rapidly that a more specialized education may end up supplanting decades of clinical experience in the future.

Informatics nurses aren’t uniformly credentialed, but HIMSS and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) both offer certification programs. In addition, some colleges and universities are beginning to offer graduate certificates in health informatics.

Professional Duties and Work Environment

The core professional responsibilities of the Nurse Informatics professional include collecting, managing and interpreting patient and nursing data; developing and maintaining research protocols and health IT systems infrastructures; building and securing a nationwide health information database; defining, evaluating and revising nursing practices and standards of patient care; streamlining communications within various facets of the healthcare industry; facilitating public health and nursing education; and otherwise advancing patient health through the application of information technology and systems.

Perhaps the most common professional title among informatics nurses is IT Clinical Nurse, or Nurse Informatics Clinician, whose basic duties include operating and maintaining the nursing-related or patient-care facets of clinical IT systems. Nurse Informatics Clinicians may also implement electronic health records (EHR) or clinical information systems, although comprehensive system evaluation and design are typically reserved for Managers of Nursing Informatics (MNI).

All employment sectors within the healthcare industry rely on informatics nurses, from acute care centers to private consultancies, although about half of the respondents to the HIMSS survey discussed above worked in hospitals. Informatics nurses can also be found at pharmaceutical companies, medical research labs and public health facilities, among various other professional environments.

Salary

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has yet to publish employment or salary data for informatics nurses, given the novelty of the field, but BLS data on RN salaries as of May 2010 indicate a wide salary range, with the lowest 10% of earners taking home less than roughly $44,000 while the top 10% netted more than around $95,000. The median annual wage the same year was just under $65,000. As in most fields, experience and education tend to correlate with better wages and employment prospects in nursing health informatics.

BLS data are culled from employers across the country, and local resources may yield more insight into conditions in a given area, as salary and job opportunity are often dependent upon education, training, experience, physical location and type of job.

Tyana Daley is a writer for University Alliance. She writes about career-related topics across many industries including healthcare and human resources. 

I was inspired by a blog post from one of RN.FM Radio’s previous guests, Martine Ehrenclou author of the Take Charge Patient where she wrote about her husband’s recent urgent care experience. Just to preface, it was typical guy stuff that involved a hockey injury to his finger that needed immediate attention, but like most men we just lean in the direction of letting it resolve on its own. This particular outcome was positive, but it was indeed an injury that required some stitches to help prevent infection and a wedding band that needed to be cut off prior to the procedure. Apparently the nurse was a little nervous with the saw that was to do the actual cutting, but Martine’s husband seemed to know his way around tools and decided to literally take the matter into his own hands.

This just brought me back to the days when I lived in Virginia and stories like this were pretty common, except they were mostly occurring in someone else’s garage with a standby of 100 proof whiskey to sterilize the area and some duct tape to keep out the “dirt” so they could get back to dropping in that big block 385 V8 engine into a Ford pickup.

Sounds like the start of a good Charlie Daniels Band song:

“Grab that saw and hand it over here son. Hold that finger down and let me show you how it’s done…”

Now prior to Martine and her husband’s arrival to the urgent care, she was researching online reviews of centers in their area. I know many of us use Yelp or Google reviews to find comments on restaurants, but I don’t think most of us think about using it as a tool to find medical care. I applaud her efforts to head to the InterWebs to find more information about patient experiences.

I was talking to a friend of mine just last year about getting more involved in social media and encouraging his patients to post reviews online. Overall it seems his patients felt as if they were receiving great care, but he was desperate to grow his practice and looking for ways to get the word out. He initially laughed at me by even suggesting it, but since he decided to take that advice his practice started growing and he even had to hire two more docs.

Openly sharing our experiences has become a fairly common practice. It might even be to a fault. You know who you are. Updating your Facebook profile with your sore throats, influenza, and sinus infection stories. I don’t want to come across as insensitive. I hope you feel better, but it’s just not as cool as Martine’s story.

I digress.

So if we’re going to be sharing a few of our more intimate details, how about if we help each other out? Due to HIPPA regulations the hospitals can’t necessarily share this information, but by our own free will we certainly can. And we obviously do. So if you’re one of those TMI sharing types, how about when you check in at the ER you also check in on Foursquare? One of the helpful features of Foursquare is to see how many people are currently checked in at a particular location. This could really help in a metropolitan area where there are several ER’s to choose from. Folks can pull up their Foursquare app on the phone and see how many people are currently waiting or actively being seen.

Of course my disclaimer is that if you need emergency medical attention, use your smartphone to call 911 or head to the nearest ER immediately. 

This may keep that flow of traffic in and out of the ER’s a little more manageable. But, just like any good establishment you may have a more loyal customer base and that particular location is just a happening place. As always your mileage may vary. Foursquare would probably have to update its terms of service, but like I said, we seem to be sharing all of our details with anyone who’s interested (or not).

Hopefully you can see the humor in this post as I don’t really expect this to actually take hold. I couldn’t ethically nor have I ever recommended any of my patients to share their private health information in this way. This is just a random Thursday thought that got me thinking about all of this sharing we do and how we can help each other. At the very least I do find the healthcare related reviews helpful when I’m recommending care for some of the clients I serve.

Martine, thanks for sharing your husband’s experience. Jamie is a lucky guy to have you advocate for him, and he now has a pretty cool story to go along with it.

Welcome Feedback

The simplest way to ensure everyone on your staff is happy is to ask them. Rather than sit in a room with other supervisors and decide what’s best for everyone else, involve the staff in new decisions. Supervisors should be open and friendly, and willing to hear about work problems. They should encourage any staff member to not only approach them with problems, but with suggestions for solutions.

You should encourage openness, but recognize some people may be afraid of admitting there’s a problem. If those issues aren’t addressed, you can’t have a happy and productive staff. Have a suggestion box where people can make anonymous comments and then you can address the entire staff.

Meet Regularly

Keeping a hospital staff happy isn’t as simple as one single effort to get everyone’s feedback and discuss possible solutions, although that’s a start. New issues arise and proposed solutions don’t always work as planned. Regularly examine everyone’s feedback.

While you should still be open to suggestions daily, it can be difficult in a hectic hospital environment to make time every day for issues. Set a weekly or monthly date for a regular check-in. While not everyone can attend since the hospital needs working staff at all times, you should make it so every department is adequately represented. If the staff knows their issues will be addressed on a regular basis, they’ll be more willing to discuss them.

Praise the Individual’s Strengths

Getting feedback is important, but giving it is as important when it comes to your staff’s motivation. Habitually review each employee’s performance individually and focus on their strengths. Let them know why they’re integral to the hospital and how they can use their strengths to make the team function better.

If there are any things you’d like to see an employee improve, be clear about how you expect them to improve. However, don’t forget to praise them. As the Harvard Business School explains, it’s essential you motivate and not demotivate your employees; act like a coach and not a dictator.

Keep Work Schedules Regular

Working at a hospital is rewarding, but it’s also extremely demanding. Most staff members know hospitals are open 24/7, year-round, but that doesn’t mean every staff member wants to be available to work those hours. If possible, give as many employees as you can regular hours unless they sign up to be a substitute. It’s beneficial for patients to see the same staff members at the same time each day as well.

On the other hand, emergencies do come up and you have to account for vacation days. Allow for flex room in your hospital’s staff schedule to accommodate. Rely on substitutes for days where a regular calls in sick or requests the day off, but make the situation less stressful for the substitutes by letting them know ahead of time when they may be on call. For example, you could have a nurse on call for the night shift Mondays through Thursdays and not have her on call for Fridays through Sundays.

Ensuring a happier staff at a hospital may be as simple as welcoming feedback and suggestions from everyone, meeting regularly to address issues, treating staff as individuals and praising their strengths, and keeping schedules as regular as possible with room for flexibility. Overall, the key to a happier staff is communication. Address potential problems early, before they become greater issues. You’ll find the result is a less stressful work environment.

About the Author: Hidemi Fukuoka is a contributing writer and hospital nursing supervisor. She’s witnessed an improvement in her staff’s productivity after she began providing and receiving regular feedback.

The value of feeling great emotionally and physically from your head all the way down to your big toe is really immeasurable. My elbows are actually feeling particularly excellent today. You?

I know that I’m always advocating for out of the box thinking. I’m an out of the box evangelist, but this time we’re going back inside the box. Birchbox.

Innovative Nurse is sponsoring three Birchbox subscription giveaways for National Nurses Week, and this is a gift that will keep on giving (for three months that is). Here are the details below:

Additional clarification for the Innovative Nurse giveaway:

First, if you aren’t following then how can you expect to know what’s going on? Although if you’ve found this post, then I suppose you are following. Next, you need to post, comment, shout out, let us know you’re here and be sure to use the #NursesGive on any of the platforms you post. This hashtag will help us track all of the participants so they can be entered into our random drawing.

We’ll announce our first BirchBox winners on May 6th live on RNFM, the next round on May 8th, and the final Birchbox winners will be announced on May 10th  on all of our platforms. The FINAL Grand Prize winner will be announced on RNFM’s May 13th show.

Innovative Nurse:

Facebook: http://facebook.com/innovativenurse

Twitter: http://twitter.com/innovativenurse

Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/100747245590869481888/

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/innovativeRN

Our Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/InnovativeNurse

Caudalie Divine Oil 

Nexxus Youth Renewal Rejuvenating Elixir

StriVectin-SD Eye Concentrate for Wrinkles

Youngblood Anti-Shine Mattifier

Weleda Body Lotion

Women’s Health magazine one year subscription

Here are the details of the RN.FM Radio giveaway. We’d love for you to share you previous Nurses Week gifts and tokens of appreciation. Don’t hold back and be sure to use #NursesGive.

(Update) Here are a list of the winners thus far:

BirchBox Giveaways

@BastidiasRN

@AngelNurseRN

@Jenncouture

@TheNerdyNurse

A Free coaching session with Keith Carlson

@selfemployedMSN

“Nursing is rigorous and demanding,” said Julie Pusztai, the Director of the Neighborhood Wellness Center at Azusa Pacific University and an instructor at its School of Nursing. “However, to those that hold nursing at high value, and desire to care for others, I will say that it could be the best decision of their lives.”

Consider these three factors that will still make nursing an attractive career.

1. Nursing remains an enriching career with many different satisfying paths

Amy Bernard, the Director for Continuing Education at Western Schools, said that nursing offers many more rewards than just a paycheck.

“Nursing is an incredibly rewarding profession,” she said. “The opportunity to help people stay well or those who are sick or suffering, and to be able to participate in their recovery, is very fulfilling and provides a great deal of intrinsic reward. That helps (patients) feel better, but also makes us feel good as well.”

In a recent survey, 91 percent of RNs were satisfied with their jobs. One of the reasons for nurse satisfaction is the strong relationships they build together because of the important jobs they have. Pusztai said that nurses’ lives are unique. They laugh and cry together through the relationships they build with their co-workers, and they need each other to succeed. Nurses often say that the camaraderie they build is one of the best parts of the job.

“It’s very fulfilling to be part of a team where the focus is on the well-being of others,” Bernard said. “You feel like you are making a difference.”

There are also a variety of choices within the nursing industry. Most people think of a hospital nurse when they think of the profession, but there are many other possibilities. The book “201 Careers in Nursing” illustrates the huge number of career options that exist in nursing today.

“You can do research, you can lead organizations, and the practice environments are seemingly unlimited,” Bernard said. “You can work in a hospital, in an office, in a simulation lab, on an airplane, in a board room, or in a school. You can work in a company, in education, in government, for non-governmental organizations, in a clinic, or in travel. You name it, a nurse can do it!”

2. The job outlook remains very optimistic

Nursing opportunities are expected to surge in the next 10 years, with 26 percent more jobs available between 2010 and 2020. That is almost double the rate of other professions, and nursing opportunities are everywhere. That increase will also likely include more responsibilities for nurses. Bernard said that in many of those instances, nurses will take on more leadership roles. While only six percent of hospital board members are currently nurses, the number of nurses that will become leaders in the industry should increase.

“Nurses will start making more decisions,” Bernard said. “No one spends more time with the patient than the nurse, and their roles will become increasingly important.”

Pusztai said that the nursing industry will need the next generation to come forth because of the current shortage, and said more diversity is needed. A recent survey revealed that only nine percent of nurses were minorities, and that an increase of more than 20,000 minority nurses is needed just to increase their proportion of the nursing workforce by 1 percent.

Pusztai said grants, scholarships and loan programs are available for nursing workforce development and retention, as well as for diversity development.

“This all means that now is a good time to enter into nursing education,” she said.

3. Nurses play an important role in society and make a difference even when they aren’t on the clock

Recent Gallup polls suggest that nursing is the most trusted profession in America. More than 85 percent of Americans trust nurses, a higher rating than even pharmacists or physicians. That’s not a recent development – nurses have been the top-ranked profession in America for 11 straight years.

“Being trusted has its own reward but can be humbling at the same time,” Pusztai said.  “Many nurses would say they have a ‘calling’. We are a critical part of the patient’s medical care. We make a difference in lives.” All of that equates to great opportunities for growth and enrichment – but that is not only when nurses are on the clock. Nurses take the knowledge and skills they learn and use them every day, not just at work but also in their personal lives. “Few professions are as rewarding and provide such instant gratification,” Bernard said. “The skills you learn are practical and you can use them in a wide variety of ways – as a nurse, a parent, a family member, a neighbor, or a friend.”

Bernard said none of that will change anytime soon, so despite the new challenges of the industry, nursing remains a great option. The next five years will be full of change, but with change comes opportunity,” she said.

Kevin Cary writes about topics related to many different career fields for job-hunt.org.

Alright, so what’s my point here? Well, ask yourself when was the last time you shopped at Kmart? Of course you may not have a Kmart in close proximity, or it may be a shopping experience that you’re not necessarily aligned with. The glaring statement when it comes to this brand is that prior to this particular ad campaign, Kmart was pretty close to flatlining. Get the crash cart and the trauma team here stat. It seems that Kmart was looking for a team, a vision, and a campaign that was going to resuscitate their brand in a major way.

I can picture the ad team sitting around trying to figure out the what, the why, and the how when it came to applying those defibrillator paddles to jumpstart the heart of Kmart’s business and to get it back into rhythm. I’m sure this campaign was born from caffeine overload, fatigue, and a few of the creative folks sitting around a table joking about how they could push the envelope a little, and probably ended up with a few of them shipping their pants in the process.

Again, you may be wondering how this all relates to your small business. Here’s the thing. The sheer size of Kmart’s footprint, although nowhere near what other retailers’ presence might be, had a much larger fleet to correct the course. You too may be experiencing a similar need to correct the course of your business and get it back on track. You may also not be in a position to make a move so bold, nor may it necessarily be the right approach, but a bold move is sometimes what we entrepreneurs need to take when our businesses need a shot in the arm.

I’ve often talked about an entrepreneur’s need to continually assess their business just as we nurses have to frequently assess the ever-changing status of our patients’ physiology. This physiology can certainly translate into the function of the business and keeping your finger on that pulse is a must. I honestly think that nurses are some of the most creative professionals out there. Just think about the ways we’ve had to troubleshoot issues that have come up and how quickly we’re able to implement a plan of care that meets the need of our patients.

If after assessing your business you find that it could use an infusion to boost your message, improve your community engagement, or increase your sales, then evaluate whether a bold move might need to take place to catapult your brand. Start small and don’t think that you need to have Kmart’s advertising and marketing budget. Go back to your current or past clients to find out why they “bought in” to your products or services.

Use Survey Monkey, make a friendly request in a newsletter, Tweet it out, or simply call them and ask about their experience. Let them know that you’re working on something bold and you would really love (and get consent) to share their experiences. I’ve talked to many of my past clients and they’ve been very open about sharing their own what, why, when, and how they’ve used the services I’ve delivered to them. You might be amazed when you hear about what a client might actually implement into their daily routine just by being a customer of your product or service. The story behind their results could in some way be a catalyst for your next creative plan to rejuvenate your brand.

Now go out there and be bold.

We may not all be “good” writers, but I’ll bet that we all want to be heard. Writing is art, experimentation; it’s communication without being interrupted, and it can certainly be a huge part of your self-development. There are a plethora of artists out there with a wide range of expression. In my opinion writing isn’t much different.

There are many new and well-established nurse bloggers out there. I stumble upon them each day via Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and a few have even branched out onto YouTube. So if you’re ready to take the next step with your content, below are a few tips to consider when you set up your blog.

Okay, so you’ve just signed up for a blogging service; you just put up your first post; you promoted the post through your Facebook and/or Twitter account; you are ready for eager readers to find your content and listen to what you have to say. Don’t mind the sound of crickets. If you’re consistent, they will eventually hop along.

Creative Commons

1)    Relax. Often when someone starts a blog, they expect some kind of miracle to occur and everyone they know is going to visit their blog and comment. The truth is, this couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, many of the views you receive will be from people you do not even know. Many will have just stumbled upon your site by sheer accident.

I know you’re exhausted and you’ve poured yourself into this blog, but don’t expect too much, too soon. Unless you have some huge advertising budget and a social media manager, the process of having a successful blog will come with dedication and time. There will be days where you’ll be discouraged and unmotivated. These days come and go but commit to writing for you and just have fun. There will be an audience that aligns and appreciates your voice, but it takes time.

2)    Avoid excessive gadgets, pictures, videos, pop-ups, and anything else that requires downloading. All of these things are great to have in small to medium doses but when you overdo it, many people will get frustrated because of the time it takes to load the page.

There are still millions of people in the U.S. alone that do not have access to broadband Internet. I was in the Apple store a few months ago and there was a customer asking one of the employees if the Macbook had a built in modem. Yikes! There are still some folks in small towns that are still on dial up. Hopefully the days of receiving our AOL discs in the mail are far behind us, but again do be conscientious about the load time of your site. Signing up with Google Analytics is a definite must, and there are tools within the dashboard that will display information about the load times of your site.

Focus on the content first, but I understand that you want your site to be aesthetically pleasing. Find a balance. Try to use low file size images and one video per post. Use gadgets that are useful and add value to your blog. Keep some white space in there. Don’t fill each nook and cranny with a widget or a photo. A search bar for your blog is essential, however you do not need dancing images in the background. Again, it is all about finding a balance.

3)    Learn from feedback. It probably goes without saying but people are a little more “free” with their comments over the Internet. This is both a benefit and a problem when it comes to instant feedback.

A quick message sometimes comes off as flippant so keep this in mind when you’re reviewing emails or public comments. These comments may come across as rude but be sure to really pay attention to what someone is telling you. There are a number of readers out there that may just not be very tactful. Certainly kick the spammers to the curb, but there are times when we write very passionately and this can invoke some very passionate responses.

Remember, even if you are not very skilled in writing and you’re still trying to find your voice, it will come. This is a natural process. Consistent blogging will eventually help improve your writing skills, and you can also take this opportunity to brush up on a few technical skills through a local or virtual writing class. There is also much to learn from veteran bloggers out there, and many of them offer tutorials for free or a small financial investment.

Find your voice, pick a canvas, and create. I look forward to becoming part of  your audience.