The Nursing Informatics Specialty

Nursing Informatics (NI) became prominent as a clinical specialty in the 1970's and has grown over the past three or more decades. In 1994, the American Nurses' Association recognized nursing informatics as a professional specialty, and certification is now available at the generalist level.

Nurses who work in informatics have many different role options that include information systems trainer, systems analyst, project manager, and more. They have the opportunity to join both nursing and health informatics organizations at the regional, national, and international levels. Promoting nursing's agenda in the larger professional informatics community is an important objective for our specialty.

With the national (US) initiative to develop electronic health records for all citizens by 2014, the job market for nurses in informatics is growing at a faster pace than the supply of nurses qualified to fill available positions. Several educational programs exist to prepare nurses for the growing informatics job market, but since this website is a product of the Duke Nursing Informatics class of 2006, the fact that "the Difference is Duke" prompts us to link our Duke program as an exemplar of excellence in the NI field.