MSN to DNP
Nursing Informatics Degree Program

Nurse informaticist salaries vary widely based on job responsibilities, experience, education, employer, region, leadership level, and professional credentials.

The latest Nursing Informatics Workforce salary report currently available from HIMSS uses 2022 U.S. salary data. In that survey, 60% of nursing informatics professionals reported base salaries above $100,000. HIMSS also found substantial differences by experience, education, region, and certification.

Those figures are useful for understanding the profession, but they should not be read as an expected starting salary or a promise of what any graduate will earn. They are national workforce survey results, not Herzing graduate outcomes.

A DNP and a PhD are both doctoral degrees, but they are built for different kinds of work.

The Doctor of Nursing Practice is a practice-focused doctorate. DNP education emphasizes applying and translating evidence, improving healthcare delivery, leading systems change, and evaluating outcomes. Herzing's Nursing Informatics DNP pathways apply that model through informatics specialty study and a multi-course DNP Practice Project residency sequence.

A PhD in nursing is research-focused. Research doctorates prepare nurse scientists and scholars to generate new knowledge through original research, typically culminating in a dissertation or comparable research work. DNP-prepared nurses are more focused on putting evidence into practice and evaluating its impact.

Health informatics is a broad, multidisciplinary field concerned with using data, information, knowledge, and technology to improve healthcare. It can include professionals from medicine, nursing, public health, computer science, pharmacy, administration, research, and other disciplines.

Nursing informatics is a nursing specialty within that larger field. It applies informatics specifically through the knowledge, responsibilities, and perspective of nursing. The American Nurses Association describes nursing informatics as integrating nursing science with computer and information science to manage and communicate information in nursing practice.

You will study how nursing, data, information systems, and healthcare technology work together. The curriculum develops skills in healthcare data analysis, clinical information systems, interoperability, data governance, privacy and security, emerging technologies (including AI), workflow evaluation and optimization, technology implementation, evidence-based practice, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

You will also examine the human side of technology adoption: how to identify stakeholder needs, educate users, manage change, evaluate unintended consequences, and determine whether technology is actually improving safety, quality, care coordination, or organizational outcomes.

Doctoral coursework, should you choose a DNP program, adds greater emphasis on improvement science, systems-based practice, evidence translation, population health, professional leadership, and implementing change through the DNP Practice Project. This moves the focus from becoming proficient in informatics practice toward leading informatics work at the systems and organizational level.

Advanced nursing practice in informatics is often systems-focused rather than bedside-focused. It can involve analyzing healthcare data, evaluating clinical information systems, improving workflows, directing technology implementation, developing data-governance strategies, assessing AI and decision-support tools, leading change, and measuring effects on patient and organizational outcomes.

Importantly, advanced nursing practice is not synonymous with being an APRN or nurse practitioner. CCNE's nursing education standards identify informatics as an example of an advanced nursing practice specialty, alongside areas such as leadership/administration and population health, while APRN roles are addressed separately.

Herzing's nursing informatics outcomes reflect that systems-level definition of practice. Students learn to support system design and clinical decision-making, analyze data, evaluate technologies and AI, coordinate implementation and governance, and lead interdisciplinary change.

AI is expanding the responsibilities of nursing informatics beyond implementing and optimizing traditional healthcare technology.

AI-enabled tools can now influence clinical decision support, documentation, summarization, predictions, workflow automation, and how healthcare data are interpreted. That creates new questions for nurse informaticists:

• Is the underlying data appropriate?
• How does the tool perform in the actual clinical environment?
• Could it introduce bias or unsafe recommendations?
• Does it fit nursing workflow?
• Who is accountable for monitoring it?

Federal health IT policy is moving in the same direction. The ASTP/ONC HTI-1 rule established transparency requirements for AI and other predictive algorithms in certified health IT and requires risk-management practices addressing areas such as validity, fairness, safety, security, and privacy.

Herzing's nursing informatics curriculum incorporates emerging technologies alongside data governance, interoperability, privacy, security, ethics, workflow optimization, implementation, and clinical outcomes. AI is therefore treated not just as a new capability, but as technology that nurses need to evaluate and govern responsibly.

An academic degree or certificate and a professional certification are different credentials.

A nursing informatics degree or post-master's certificate represents completion of an academic program. Professional certification, such as the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Informatics Nursing Certification (NI-BC), is a separate credential awarded to nurses who meet ANCC eligibility requirements and pass its certification examination.

Graduation from our program by itself does not qualify you for NI-BC certification. In accordance with the most recent eligibility requirements, you’ll need more hours in informatics nursing after graduation before becoming eligible.

Possibly. Our program requires a minimum of 1,000 post-baccalaureate practice hours as part of supervised academic programs, and students who completed post-baccalaureate practice hours in a previous graduate nursing program need to submit verification of those hours during their first semester.

Please contact admissions if you have any more questions about the verification process, and how many hours can potentially count towards our program.

A DNP is a practice-focused doctorate, so the emphasis is on using evidence to improve real healthcare practice and systems rather than producing the kind of original research typically associated with a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) describes DNP education as preparing nurse leaders to translate research into practice, improve outcomes, and lead at the highest level of nursing practice.

In a nursing informatics specialty, that work centers on systems-level problems such as clinical workflows, healthcare technology, data, quality improvement, implementation, governance, and organizational change.

DNP programs require a minimum of 1,000 post-baccalaureate practice hours as part of a supervised academic program. At least 300 hours must be completed at Herzing as part of the DNP Practice Project, which represents the culmination of your DNP education.

Key elements of the DNP project include:

• Identify a problem
• Search, analyze, and synthesize literature and evidence
• Translate evidence to build methodology to address the problem
• Plan and implement
• Evaluate the outcomes, process and experience

Upon completion, you’ll work closely with your Project Chair to disseminate your findings, from presentation to the practice and University/community events including submission for publication.

An MSN or a post master’s certificate in Nursing Informatics may be worth pursuing if you want formal graduate preparation for work involving healthcare data, clinical systems, EHR optimization, workflow improvement, technology implementation, analytics, governance, or informatics leadership.

A DNP offers more potential for pursuing leadership pathways at the highest levels, being the terminal degree in nursing. It is most relevant when your goals involve doctoral-level nursing practice, systems leadership, evidence translation, organizational improvement, and leading complex informatics initiatives.

The decision should depend on the work you want to do, not simply on earning another credential. Compare the education requirements of roles you are targeting with the time and financial investment of the degree. An MSN may offer the most value when you want both advanced nursing education and a defined informatics specialty.