NurseZone.com had an interesting article in their recent newsletter concerning the up and coming hottest specialities in nursing.

Judy Ozbolt, RN, Ph.D., FAAN, FACMI, FAIMBE, program director for the University of Maryland’s Nursing Informatics program, said that nurses specializing in informatics, which combines nursing science with computer and health sciences to integrate systems and help health care providers document care and record evidence of their practice, will be in greater demand as technology and health care become more integrated.

“Nursing informatics is a field that is certainly in growing demand,” Ozbolt said. “The Recovery and Rehabilitation Act covers $1 billion a year for projects that will help acquire and implement electronic health records. There will be an acute need for nurse informatics once this is implemented.”

Graduates of nurse informatics programs most often go on to work in health care organizations to help maintain and develop systems that support everything from patient information to care documentation. Nurse informatics graduates also work at companies that develop these systems as well as branches of the federal government.

“Health care reform is going to depend very heavily on electronic tools to improve the safety and quality of care,” Ozbolt said. “People trained in nursing informatics will be needed to help get good, useful systems in place. Because nurses are at the heart of the information flow in health care, they really have excellent insights into which kind of information systems will work well.”

Nursing specialties focusing on technology, geriatrics and the acute-care patient population are all expected to expand in the near future, according to Mary Jean Schumann, RN, MSN, MBA, CPNA and chief programs officer for the American Nurses Association.

Specialties centered upon more complex clinical cases are also expected to grow in demand as patients become sicker with chronic illness and disease. “Due to the economy, we are going to see more of these kinds of patients with complex needs because they are waiting to see the doctor and receive care.”   For more, we link to this article.

We also link to the best and most popular NurseZone articles of 2009.