Bedside patient care and developing computer software isn't an obvious combination for a career. Yet there is a growing nursing specialty that needs nurses who are proficient in both areas.

Called nursing informatics, the specialty combines computer savvy with nursing expertise.

For Barry Lung, RN, who is currently finishing his master's degree in the specialty at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, it was a perfect fit. A self-described "techie" who loved to fiddle with software programs and databases in his spare time, Lung saw informatics as a good marriage between his love of nursing and his passion for computers.

"Most large hospitals have nurses in their information services department that support patient care. They may not be educated in informatics, but they are functioning in that capacity," he said.

"When you talk about developing software and input screens, for [putting] information into a database like patient care information, who better to develop that than a nurse that knows what nurses need," Lung said.

"Before nursing informatics, you had techies designing the software. It often didn't make a lot of sense to nurses, because there would be information they needed to help them in their decisions and support and it wouldn't be there. But if you're not a nurse, you don't know that."

Valuable CEU session
Lung first heard about the specialty in 1999 during a Georgia Nurses Association convention. He attended a onehour CEU session where the instructor explained what nursing informatics specialists do. "I saw that, and said, ‘wow, that's me.' "

A clinical educator at the Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon, and a former U.S. Air Force electronics engineer, Lung began taking classes in Milledgeville. Currently, there are just two programs in the state - Medical College of Georgia also has an allied health informatics program.

He is now in a systems analyst position at the hospital, in patient support, one of four nurses in the off-campus operation that oversees the hospital's database and software operations and projects.

"We perform a lot of functions, from project management for new software online to surgical services documentation to developing electronic medical records for patients," he said. "Software can provide a record for continuity of care that is more difficult to do with a paper record."

Looking ahead
In the future, "nursing informatics will increasingly become a more important specialty as the nation moves forward in making patient records electronic," he said.

The challenge, from the informatics specialist's perspective, said Lung, is educating clinicians and patients about these new electronic records.

"[The record] doesn't look the same on the computer screen as it is on the paper, and when you print it out, it won't look exactly the same as you're used to seeing it on the old patient forms," he said.

"But there are a lot of advantages. A lot of hospitals are going to portable notebook computers, and if a patient wanted to see their information, you could bring that information and show it to them.

"And when all hospitals have electronic medical records in the database, you'll be able to network with the physicians office."

Lung said that the hope is, in the next decade, that electronic patient records will be accessible nationwide by physicians and authorized health care professionals.

"If I'm on vacation and have a car wreck and, unconscious, am taken to a local emergency room, the physician can access certain parts of my data, to see if I have any allergies, etc. We can't do that yet."

Informatics is a graduate program, and provides a master's degree. "Generally speaking, you make more in this area [than as a bedside nurse] and you can expect to earn between $55,000-$90,000 a year," he said.

For information on nursing informatics, go to www.ania.org or www.healthcare-informatics.com.