About Me

I’m really just a computer nerd who found a passion in nursing…

My Background

I currently work for one of the largest healthcare companies in the U.S., where I help to coordinate the efforts to ensure electronic health record (EHR) clinical documentation and content are consistent with federal and state regulations, as well as with our organizational policies. I analyze the current state of our various EHRs and help to facilitate the enhancement to meet the intent of regulatory policy and organizational goals. I’m also involved in various aspects of clinical informatics, and data analytics product design and maintenance.

Previous to this, I was an EHR support analyst for the same company, but working at a regional level. For me, this role was the pivotal link between the nursing world and IT. In this role, I provided EHR support to nursing and ancillary staff, facilitated corporate-mandated EHR changes, as well as education and reporting solutions within the EHR.

I began my adult life thinking I’d pursue a degree in computer science, and I began my college career as such taking about 9 college semesters of computer science courses. However, life experiences and circumstances changed that course a bit. I started my healthcare adventure as a laboratory assistant in a large forensic toxicology laboratory. From there, I dabbled in phlebotomy for a few years and then decided I wanted more involvement in patient care through nursing. While in nursing school I took an internship as a dialysis technician and worked as a hemodialysis RN upon graduation from nursing school. From there, I feared being pigeonholed in one nursing specialty, so I remedied that by working in my local hospital’s float pool, where I was a jack of all trades. Later, we’d relocate to our current locale in Florida where I re-ignited my love for procedural nursing in the operating room. Aside from patient care, my time in the operating room was more technical than ever imagined. In that role, I provided basic technical support for many of the surgical technologies (robotics, laparoscopic, rfid..etc) and worked on facility committees to improve the surgical department communications with existing systems.

In my current role as a Clinical Analyst/Informaticist, I advocate for my nursing and ancillary peers by ensuring the clinical documentation process doesn’t stray to far from the established workflow and make every effort to minimize technology-related distractions and barriers.

This Blog and My Philosophy

So what is informatics anyways?

After my own experiences in nursing school and providing support to my nursing peers through an informatics perspective, I concluded that there just isn’t enough awareness or insight surrounding this specialty. To help informatics nurses now and in the future, I wanted to create an online resource that was light-hearted yet informative. I didn’t want the world of informatics to seem too technical or out of reach to the average nurse.  I wanted to create a blog that looked at the current and future states of nursing practice, in addition to celebrating technological advances in healthcare through a foray into the history or medical practices. I wanted to provide a blog that provided realistic advice and real-world examples of how nurses could gain entry and further their careers in this field and move from the bedside to a new role in nursing informatics.