"How do I get started in informatics?" is one of the most common questions I get, and it's almost always a complicated and unique answer. I rarely get asked, "Is informatics the right fit for me?" Let's start on what actually pulls your attention during a shift.

Here's a way to think it through honestly, instead of guessing based on a job title.

Signs it might be a fit

You're usually the one who notices the workaround. When a workflow doesn't quite work, you're the one who builds the shortcut, puts in the ticket to IT, or loops in your management. Maybe you try to figure out why three different units are documenting the same thing three different ways.

You get more frustrated by systems than by people. Difficult patients and families are part of the job. What actually wears on you is a five-click process that should take one click, or the alert that fires for the wrong reason so often that everyone ignores it, or it really drives you crazy when people say "we've just always done it that way."

You like structure and pattern more than most of your peers do. Documentation isn't just a task to get through for you. You notice when it's inconsistent, and you have opinions about how it should work.

You want to shift away from bedside nursing and also recognize that doesn't mean it's going to be easy. People management can shift from a challenging assignment to a looming deadline or leading a workgroup through a strongly opinionated topic.

Signs it might not be the right move yet

You're only looking for an easy out from bedside tomorrow. As I mentioned above, each job and role (particularly in healthcare) comes with its own complexities. Healthcare is a resource-limited field, and you will always need to work with other people and be on a team. Informatics roles are also limited. It took me 5 years to find a role specific to what I wanted to do and where I was working. While IT is at the forefront of healthcare with the AI boom, it's been notoriously a newer field and can be challenging to advocate for additional resources outside of direct-patient care.

You're burned out and looking for anything different. That's a legitimate reason to want change, but informatics work has its own version of burnout: stakeholder meetings, competing priorities, slow-moving governance processes. It solves a different problem than exhaustion does.

You don't have any real curiosity about how systems work. You don't need to be technical, but you do need to actually be interested in why something is built the way it is, not just annoyed that it doesn't work. Then be open to multiple solutions and how one small change can impact people in a completely different care area.

Four questions to ask yourself

Nursing informatics sits on four pillars: clinical practice, technology, data, and leadership. Your honest answers here tell you more than any personality quiz.

Clinical practice. Do you still want your clinical judgment to be the thing that makes you valuable, even if you're not the one at the bedside?

Technology. When a new system or tool gets rolled out, are you the one asking how it actually works, or the one waiting for someone else to figure it out?

Data. Do you find yourself wanting to know the why behind a number or a pattern in outcomes, not just the number itself?

Leadership. Are you comfortable being the person in the room translating between two groups who don't fully understand each other (IT and clinical staff) without fully belonging to either side?

If most of your honest answers point the same direction, that's real signal. If they don't, that's useful information too. It might mean informatics isn't the move right now, or it might mean you need a different entry point than you were picturing.

If you want to talk through your specific answers instead of guessing at them alone, that's exactly what a coaching conversation is for.