I’ve wanted to be a nurse for a few years and I seriously want to be a SANE! I’m really passionate about it, and really want to help other people that way. But IT seems so interesting and challenging and I really want to try it out and get a few certifications at least. The thing is I only want to stay here for a minimum of two years, and after that I plan to move out of state. I’ll wait a year before continuing nursing but I want to get my LPN before I move and something official for IT and I’m not sure if I can complete everything in time. Should I self study for certifications? I don’t have much prior knowledge.
I’m planning on going to community college but I’m also thinking about technical school.
I’m wondering about IT as a career too but I’m not sure.
There is a field called nursing informatics that may be right up your alley. Basically, it is the combination of nursing and IT - it’s all about data and information management and networking for the support of nursing practice. Nursing informaticists make about $100,000 a year on average, and as more medical systems switch over to electronic records keeping they’ll be in high demand.
http://explorehealthcareers.org/en/Career/91/Nursing_Informaticist#Tab=Requirements
The thing is, to be a nurse informaticist you really have to be a nurse first. It’s hard to double major when you’re a nursing major because nursing is so demanding. The above website says that most nurse informaticists start out as registered nurses, work a few years, and then return and get a master’s degree in IT or computer science. There are also MS programs in health informatics that might satisfy this for you.
There’s a couple of different ways that you could potentially pursue this:
-Get your RN in an associate’s degree program; transfer to a four-year college and major in IT there.
-Get your BSN and RN at a four-year program, take some classes in computer science, and then get a master’s in IT or health informatics later.
-Get a bachelor’s degree in IT or computer science. Then go to an accelerated BSN program to get your nursing degree and RN in about 1-1.5 years.
I don’t know which one is the best route; that’s up to you.
If your school offers an RN I would highly, highly recommend going for that instead of an LPN, even if it’ll take longer. LPNs are being phased out of a lot of hospitals and clinics in favor of RNs, and there’s a pretty large pay gap even though LPNs do many of the same tasks as an RN. My mother is an LPN and she’s lamented about as much as she works. The RN is really the lower standard of licensure for a nurse these days.