What are your clinical and informatics backgrounds?

[shainwaugh]

I have transitioned from technology into nursing in the South Florida area. I have 7 years of technology experience in business intelligence and wanted to transition into nursing technology; however, I do not know the proper route of doing that transition. I see that there is a wealth of experience members in the discussion. If you can provide me with some advice on this, I would greatly appreciate it.

[NAJO]

I started out early in informatics. My hospital bought an IBM Displaywriter in about 1981 that had a single disk drive for an 8-inch floppy disk. There were thousands of pages of manuals to operate the thing, but basically, all it could do was word processing and an elementary database. No one knew how to use it, so I started staying after work many hours and mastered it, so that I had eventually maximized its potential. I knew it was the only way I would survive as a quality assurance professional in a mega-hospital in NYC. I wrote programs that automated data crunching and reporting for the 33 nursing units I was responsible for. Learning to program using that machine was most helpful for later applications.

Since then, I have done all my work on PCs. Then, I moved West and work at a Federal hospital, and have been a nurse-leader in clincal informatics. It was my job to roll out bar coding of medications, vital signs, progress notes on line, etc. Our facility is just about totally paperless at this point. I started and maintain our nursing intranet site. We automated our glucose testing program, so I also manage aspects of that. I also developed and continue to maintain software related to the Federal systems for performance evals, job descriptions and competencies. I am supposed to start a redesign of that soon.....and I hope to implement a vital signs data capture project that has been too long delayed.

My latest and biggest challenge to date has been working toward Magnet Recognition. It was my task to write the application document, which we submitted electronically, of course. (It printed out to 15 inches of paper, stacked.)

I am just joining this today, but do not see much activity on this website. I am busy enough too to understand why, but hope to see active participation and mutual assistance with our projects.

[scmcgee]

My clinical background is in Emergency Nursing. I started out initially on the Cardiac Stepdown Unit when I graduated in 1991 from a AS degree program and moved into to ER nursing in 1993. I continued ER nursing until 2004 when I moved to the Information Services Department as the Physician Coordinator in April of that year. I assisted in the PACS installation at the facility and started a new project last October for computer physician order entry. I am currently still working on this project and I have worked on electronic nursing documentation. The hospital is already up on that and we are working on stardardization of documentation throughout facility hospitals. I received a BS degree in Tech Management in October of 2004 and I am interested in getting my MS degree in healthcare admin or healthcare information services.

[mccartm2]

I spent a year on a M/S unit after graduating, but soon found my way to critical care - ICU, CCU, a bit of ED - before taking a position 11 years ago called Nursing Systems Coordinator that reported to the Directors of IT and Nursing. Several years later the facility affiliated with a large hospital chain and then I worked only for the IT dept, taking on responsibilities for some non-clinical systems. Then I began to have cross-facility responsibilites in the region and was finally moved out of the facility to the corporate office doing project management of upgrades and new installs. Then outsourcing came to be and 3 of the 6 RNs were let go, including me (2 who were hired by the new vendor were only part-time and the 1 FT RN had become an interface specialist.) I worked in QM/Performance Improvement at another facility for almost 3 years, but decided to return to the IT/Clinical Applications arena. I am the Clinical Apps analyst and currently have responsibility for maintenance and support for the OC function in the main HIS (IDX Lastword), Nursing Dept staffing and acuity systems, barcode medication delivery system from Bridge Medical, MidasPlus (for QM, CM, RM) as well as support responsibilites for many of the ancillary depts and their systems (Muse, MacLab, IMPAC, MRS, for example.) We also have a Lab analyst, a Pharm analyst, an Purchasing/HR/ (Lawson) analyst, a MR analyst, and an ADT/Billing analyst in the IT dept.

[jrmcdoug]

Perinatal Nurse for 5 years, then obtained a MSN-Leadership in healthcare with a concentration in Nursing Informatics. I've been a nursing Informaticist for 2 years.

• IS Clinical Coordinator ( Implemented Nursing Documentation System)
• Informatics Nurse Specialist
• Perinatal Nursing Informatics Coordinator ( currently)

I love this speciality!

[pcaulfield]

I became involved in nursing informatics out of a willingness to try something new not realizing that it was not a temporary "thing" as was my expectation at the time.
I have 22 years experience, with most of it being in critical care and oncology. I have only been in this role for a couple of years and I am anxious to learn more. All my training to this point has been learning as I go as it is a newly created position here. I am anxious to learn so much about nursing informatics.

[Beans]

MS in Chemistry/physical sciences, Chemistry/Physics teachers for years, RN & Computer Science student, practicing EMT-B & computer hobbyist