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Nursing Informatics Programs
Which school should I select for nursing informatics education?
Making this decision, is dependent on several factors such as what focus you wish to have in your informatics work and whether an online or traditional program is best for you.
There are at least two different foci in nursing informatics: implementation or development. Most nurses work on the implementation side.
For the implementation side of informatics you need course work that prepares you to understand and work with a systems life cycle, how to analyze work and information flow, change/organizational theory, and user-interface design. It is also important to develop an understanding of databases, particularly creating reports. One or two courses on programming can provide an understanding of the developmental side of informatics.
If you wish to develop software, the course work needs to focus on programming, database development, user interfaces, and user cognitive processes in using software. A course or two that helps an understanding the application side of informatics is also necessary. Courses should help you to develop a user mentality instead of just a programming view.
Be certain that the program includes a practicum in a healthcare agency where you gain hands-on experience. Ask where the school has practicums and what the focus is for this experience.
If you like working with end users and interfacing with vendors and advocating for patient care , then the application side of nursing informatics is where you live. Most schools focus on this side of informatics. If you see yourself in development, or writing source code for software that will be used in healthcare or being a computer programmer for a vendor or hospital, then courses should have an emphasis on software development. Very few Schools of Nursing offer this. One that I know of is University of Utah.
The other consideration is weighing whether a traditional program where you commute to school, a distance learning in which you attend classes, or a combination is better suited to you. Most online programs focus on the Application side of nursing informatics. The cost of the program and years of completion is another factor to think about especially if you plan to work full time and go to school full time.
Our value as nurses is we know the patient care workflow processes and combined with the informatics experience/education we possess the tools to integrate computer systems at strategic points of the workflow to achieve process efficiency and clinical effectiveness. It is much easier to make a technical person of a healthcare person than to get a technical person to see the complexity and idiosyncrasies of healthcare.