So You Want to Be a Nurse Informatician? Part II - Career Paths

Now that we've had a chance to think about Nursing Informatics (NI) education, let's talk about jobs.

I've been fortunate to have three different NI jobs so far in my career. I'm thinking it's easiest to start with those since I can provide first-hand experience; at the end I'll do my best to provide some information on other job opportunities I know exist.

My first NI job was as as Business Analyst (BA) with the IT department of my local Regional Health Authority (RHA). Now, if you're wondering what a Business Analyst is, it's...complicated. You can check out the International Instate of Business Analysis for more info, and I'll likely write a post someday soon on the topic, but for now I'll stick to telling you about what my job entailed. While my job was a bit of a mish-mash of responsibilities, I was primarily responsible for the support and maintenance for certain parts of our Electronic Health Record system. This included:

• Access Management & Training: Making sure anyone who needed access to the system received that access, and that the access they received was appropriate (i.e. they received only the access they needed to do their jobs), then training them on how to use the system.

• Issue Resolution: Helping users of the EHR when they ran into trouble.

• Supporting change requests: If the users of the EHR wanted a change made, we would work with them to understand exactly what their requirements were, implement the changes ourselves and/or work with the vendor, and perform validation/testing to ensure the change made did in fact meet the users' needs.

For my second job, I was a Patient Flow Improvement Coordinator (PFIC), again with my RHA. This was a combination Project Management / Process Improvement job, where my co-workers and I led projects to decrease ER wait times and readmission rates, and improve surgical access. Our team followed the Lean Six Sigma methodology, which personally I find fascinating. It's possible to get certified in Lean; another certification that would have been helpful in this role is offered through the Project Management Institute. I loved the work I got to do as a PFIC. I led meetings, designed processes, and engaged with staff across the organization. While I'm mainly an introvert I'm also Type-A...I love to lead, organize, and document things...so in some ways it suited me really well, and in others it helped me get out of my comfort zone and grow.

Which brings us to my current job. Still with the RHA, I am now a Business Intelligence Analyst, and of the three this role is my favorite. I'm now in the world of Data Analysis, where I work with our IT department to pull data out of clinical systems, and then create data models and interactive reports using a computer program called Microsoft PowerBI . I love it because it combines a lot of the skills/knowledge I gained in my first two roles, along with my love of visual design and my favorite part of Computer Science: programming.

Some other NI roles I've come across include:

• Clinical Systems Analyst / Clinical Informatics Analyst: Similar to the BA role described above. This can be with the hospital / health authority, or with the vendor (Epic, Meditech, Allscripts, etc.) themselves.

• Electronic Documentation Coordinator: Ensuring that the documentation being entered into the EHR meets required standards, working with the systems or informatics analysts to ensure the necessary functionality exists in the EHR to properly capture this information, and providing training to clinical staff.

• Chief Nursing Informatics Officer: This is the "big cheese" role in NI, the pinnacle of a Nurse Informatician's career. The Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) has a nice overview of this role available here.

There is one last piece of information / advice that I'd like to leave you with: if you are interested in a career in NI and are wondering about what jobs are out there, your best bet is to review actual job postings. A quick search of "Nursing Informatics" on indeed.ca today returned 67 results. However, because NI is still so new, if you limit your searches to "Nursing Informatics" you might be missing out. I would also suggest looking for jobs with things like "Business Analyst", "Project Manager", "Improvement Specialist", "Systems Analyst", "Electronic Documentation", etc. in the titles at any of the following places:

• Hospitals

• Health Clinics

• Doctor's Offices

• Long Term Care Facilities

• Provincial and Federal Departments of Health

• Businesses in the private sector that have a health focus

• National organizations that have a health focus (i.e. CIHI, Digital Health Canada, Canada Health Infoway, CAN Health Network etc.)

Well, I think that's enough for Part II. I'd love to do a Part III, but not quite sure yet what the focus would be. If you have a suggestion, please let me know in the comments below. Or if you have any feedback or questions I would love to hear that too!

Thanks for visiting.