It’s a frequently asked question.
Well, according to the American Nurses Association:
Nursing informatics (NI) is the specialty that integrates nursing science with multiple information and analytical sciences to identify, define, manage and communicate data, information, knowledge and wisdom in nursing practice.
But what does that really mean?
Nursing informatics is when nursing practice and information technology are integrated to bring evidence-based changes in nursing and nursing practice through data collected from electronic medical records/electronic health records (EMR/EHR), clinical data, and other hospital records.
Nursing informatics is broad. It is changing nursing electronic charting requirements to prevent redundancy and proving efficiency, developing specialty based EMR functionality changes to improve functionality, expanding specific-needs enhancements across the system for all users, coordinating physician orders into digital order sets, and even training staff in preparation for EMR/EHR system transitions or new major functionality implementations such as EMR-pump interoperability. It’s also a relatively new specialty, only have received its designation by the ANA in 1992.
Nurses in NI often function as a bridge, communicating the needs and expectations between clinical and IT staff. NI requires a lot of data analysis: finding and understanding trends that may be present in clinical practice, measure clinical metrics for safety, success or performance, and pulling reports for stakeholders.
NI positions can be found under a broad spectrum of titles that include informaticist, specialist, coordinator, or even analyst. Not to mention, NIs may work under either the nursing or information technology (IT) department depending on the internal structure of the facility.
The next time you search for NI positions, try the following titles:
- Nursing Informaticist
- Nursing Informatics Specialist
- Nursing Informatics Clinician
- Clinical Informatics Coordinator
- Clinical Informaticist
- Clinical Analyst
- Clinical Consultant
- IT Clinical Nurse
- Clinical Analyst Consultant
- Business Analyst
- Business Analyst Consultant
- Health Informatics Consultant
- Chief Medical Information Officer
- Healthcare IT Project Manager
- EHR/ EMR Specialist
- Epic✝
- Allscripts✝
- Mckesson✝
- EHR Trainer
✝ Consider searching by EHR system if you are a subject matter expect