Nurse here

I am a Registered Nurse and recently decided to expand my knowledge into the IT field. My love for technology started right after high school when I landed an internship in the local hospital’s Information Services department. It is something I had always wanted to do, but I also wanted involvement with patients and healthcare. That was way back in 2001 and I never thought I could work in both fields. That was until I discovered that nurses are recruited into healthcare IT. We even have a Master’s degree called Nursing Informatics.

I wanted to go the informatics route, but the curricula are somewhat lacking. They teach what information we are getting and why it is beneficial, but they do not explain how to get it. So, I have decided to enroll into the CodeCademy and go the Data Science path.

It would be great if I could land a job with a degree in nursing and some coding skills. However, I also think it would be a great tool to have while studying for Nursing Informatics. I would love to hear from anyone else in the healthcare field. Has this helped at all? What are the job prospects?

I believe the Epic Electronic Health Record is built with a programming language called MUMPS(or M) and SQL. Anyone have experience with it?

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So do you want a degree in coding too? I’m sorta confused that is why i"m asking. Codecademy gets you off to a great start, and you can learn a lot, but doesn’t have everything yet.

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I’m not interested in a degree in coding. Is that available? Maybe I should check out some schools in my area to see if they have anything like that. I meant I would like to see if I can get a job with just my nursing degree. A position such as an informatics nurse or even a developer at a software company that works on Electronic Health Record software. I mentioned Epic and I believe they have the leading EHR in hospital systems.

So, I want to work on coding skills in my free time. I’m not interested in a degree. I would, however, be interested in working on a Master’s in Nursing Informatics in the future, but I want to see if I can get a job in the field before working on it.

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I’m really kind of open about which direction my career goes in. I’m not dead set on anything specific. I think my preference would be something within a hospital system and I think Nursing Informatics is the best option for that. I’m open to anything though. It would be interesting to see if EHR companies hire healthcare professionals. I think there are some translation problems between what the creators think we need and what the healthcare team actually needs.

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Well, you can learn the basics here on Codecademy by being a free member, and learn additionally with Pro and Pro intensives.

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Hi there. I work In IT (infrastructure) at a healthcare company where data science is a crucial component of what we’re trying to do: attempting to prove health outcomes for patients at our client practices. We have plenty of clinical staff who work on projects with the data scientists, and while everybody seems to work well together, I imagine the clinical staff would love having somebody like you, with interest in both fields, involved in those conversations ! We don’t use epic, rather NextGen. I’m not sure how much dev or coding the NextGen analyst performs, due to the fact that NextGen itself provides this service for us. But if we had somebody who knew coding and also had extensive knowledge of the needs of clinicians in the field, I imagine that person would be valued greatly!

Anyway, the point is that there are definitely opportunities in this area (Philadelphia), and I imagine there will only be more and more as Healthcare changes (hopefully for the better…).

-Nick

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That sounds like a really amazing job. I don’t think many people outside of healthcare would understand why, so I can see why they would hire them. Everything we do in healthcare is based on evidence. On top of that, healthcare organizations are paid based on patient outcomes. I could see a huge demand for a service like yours because it would create a higher payment rate.

You actually helped me out a little. There is something that had been bugging me for a while. I could never really figure out how the information goes from research to practice. We have a Quality team that gathers data and tells us what the best Evidence-Based Practice(EBP) is. However, I never really figured out where they are sending the data to or where they get the EBP from. You guys must be the somewhere at the top of the ladder.

BTW I used to live in NJ and would visit my brother in Philly on the weekends. My favorite place for cheesesteaks was Tony Luke’s.

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This is partly how I am feeling right now. I am a nursing student and the EHR’s for my clinical rotations are, sorry to say, garbage.

I can’t believe it has been over a year since I started this program. Last year I got through most of the Data Science program, but life got in the way. There were some disruptions, but I got it back together by around January of this year. I’m officially enrolled in a program for a Masters in Nursing Informatics and decided to come back to Codecademy. I see a lot of good changes around here and I’m excited to be back. I started the Data Science program again from the beginning and it’s coming back very easily. I’m looking forward to the curriculum and maybe one day soon start on some projects or a portfolio with you guys.

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It’s been about 3 months since you replied but I wasn’t around. What kind of program are you in? I finished up my BSN recently and enrolled in an MSN program this year. I have about 8 years of experience, so feel free to ask any questions.

I don’t miss nursing school at all lol. That was a stressful time in my life and I gained about 50 pounds.

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Yes, companies hire healthcare professionals to do different things. Our Chief Clinical Officer is a former RN, we don’t have any in our dev team at the moment.

Data Science is a way to go, but it’s very hard to give you proper advise because EHRs use different technologies. You may finish Codecademy’s course but that doesn’t guarantee you’re getting a job because while you’ll know how to analyze data, the EHR or hospital you want to work for might be using something other than Python. I’ve never heard of MUMPS before, then again I’ve only been working in healthcare for 2 years. Analyzing data is a great skill but EHR features are built more on how much revenue they can produce rather than how useful they can be. Data Science is not easy, it can be very useful but only when done properly (I haven’t seen that).

If you want to be a dev resource in a hospital, I suggest you learn how to write APIs. We use Typescript, Express and Node for that, but we also work with the FHIR standard. Regardless of the EHR you’re working with, FHIR defines the standards on how the data needs to be organized so it can be shared with different systems. You’ll also need database knowledge so take courses on SQL and noSQL (Mongo, MUMPS, etc.). AS a dev resource in healthcare, you’ll be more valuable with this knowledge as it’ll be needed regardless of the UI interface.

I feel like our profiles need an option for a signature, this would be mine: You need to be flexible. Just because you learned 1 language doesn’t that everything can be done in said language, if you only learn 1 language and don’t keep your mind open to new things you’re limiting your options for a job.

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Thanks for the advice. It’s great to hear from anyone with some insight into healthcare. Although true that you only have 2 years experience, but believe me, you just answered a lot of questions that I haven’t been able to find anywhere else.

I have about a year and a half to finish my informatics program. I had already studied for and passed an exam for the COMPTIA IT Fundamentals. It’s basically a useless cert, but I wanted something on my resume to show that I’m committed to this. Since last year and up until starting grad school, I’ve been thinking how to get into this field. My thoughts were that I’ll study Python and SQL, then build a portfolio full of little projects that I can show off. Maybe even make a website that I can link to my resume and make it interactive to try and impress future employers.

I have been considering what you said about APIs and healthcare specific technologies and I believe you’re right. I don’t think Python/SQL will land me a job so I think it’s something I’ll just show off on a portfolio and tack onto my resume. I was thinking that by the end of my program, I’ll start looking at specific companies or healthcare systems, and browse through their job posts. Hopefully I’ll find something I like, maybe a data analyst, and see what skills they’re looking for. I’ll start learning those skills, maybe take a few classes after graduation, and hopefully bring something to the table if I’m given an interview.

COMP TIA is only useful when applying for IT Support jobs, other than that I haven’t seen a need for it. My sister uses EPIC at work, I’ve played with it but I don’t know what was used to build it. It’s very hard to find that kind of information unless you talk to someone who works there. Browsing for jobs will give you an idea, but technologies are always changing.

There are many nursing programming IT jobs available now. Numerous schools are utilizing online medical software for school nurses to improve student health records. These school medical software like the one which I utilized in my school named EduHealth, assists with gathering, tracking and managing information of the student’s health in an effective manner. It is a great chance if you get into such a field.

Happy Almost 2022! I know this thread is pretty quiet, but I an RN of 14 years. I have worked mostly with education and new graduate onboarding (previously a cardiac acute care RN) for the last 9 years. I have recently stepped out of the management spotlight and into a role as a Nursing Professional Practice Analyst and Project Manager. My role is pretty new (only one person in it before me for about a year) but the majority of my role appears to be to pull and analyze data (NRC, NDNQI, Falls etc) and come up with possible trends and strategies based on my experience and Evidence Based Practice measures.

My husband is a senior software developer (BS in Physics) so I have always wanted to look into coding as well. I was so excited to see the Data Analyst track and am happily chugging along through it hoping I can find much better ways clean, analyze, and present data.

Happy Holidays!

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Glad to see other nurses around here. I just finished my Master’s in Nursing Informatics a few months ago and landed a pretty good job in nursing. I originally wanted to get out of healthcare, but I think this job has a lot of room for growth and I could potentially get into the informatics department. Unfortunately, the Master’s program got a little intense halfway through it so I had to stop with codecademy. I just signed up again, so I’m excited to focus on this since I have nothing else going on. I figure I have a few years to study data and analytics, then I can either try to transfer to informatics or IT.

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Hello all,

I scrolled down this thread in fear that there would be little to no activity. I’m thrilled to see other nurses breaking into healthcare informatics and tech in general. I’m currently working through an accelerated RN to BSN program, intending to get my Master’s in Nursing Informatics eventually. However, before I take that long hard leap, I thought getting familiar with computer science, systems, data, and how it all works would be very beneficial. I’ve been on Codecademy for about a week, and I’m trying to talk myself out of any other career path LOL. Nevertheless, I think I’m in the right place. There is so much potential here!

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Congrats on working on your bridge program! I went ADN to MSN in 2013 and am so glad I did. I loved the technical skills of my ADN program, but advancing the degree really opened up a lot of options for me. My husband is a software developer so this has been a fun experience for me to stretch into an area people are constantly pestering me to go!

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Congrats on your educational journey. Just FYI, you won’t need to know a whole lot of technical skills for your Master’s so don’t worry about it. Just jump right into it whenever you’re ready. The most technical thing I had to do was work on a small Microsoft Access database project where they basically gave us step-by-step instructions. The rest of my program was spent working on project management and how to implement a new system. There was less emphasis on the technical side and more on delegation, tasks, stages, etc. All of which I learned in school.

My only regret was that I didn’t do it sooner. I read up on data science books, statistics, etc. and had even gone through most of the data science program at codecademy. But none of it helped and I had to take a break from codecademy when the classes started becoming more difficult.

Just a side note. There are no certifications for data science, python, or development in general. However, I noticed there was some overlap with informatics and software development, especially regarding project management. After learning everything I can at codecademy, I plan on getting a scrum master certification and a lean six sigma certification. I spoke with several students and instructors who all agreed those are valuable in informatics, but I also believe scrum is important in software development.

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Thank you so much! I’ve been putting off school for a solid ten years. Since my current employer offers an excellent tuition reimbursement program, there was no time like the present.

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