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Nursing Innovation Blog

Connect with nurse innovators from across the country who are  designing, leading, and building new possibilities for health creation and health care. These #gutsynurses are sharing their insights, challenges, and helpful hints on dealing with barriers. Learn what brings them joy and how they stay the course!  Use these stories to guide, inspire, motivate, or to affirm your own creative work or innovative thinking!

Innovation Blog Posts

Making a Difference in Children’s Lives

When I’m asked “What do you like about nursing” I respond with “it’s having the opportunity to make a positive difference in someone’s life.”

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RNconnect: Caring for Those Who Care For Us

Nobody could have possibly been prepared for the impact of COVID-19. The pandemic deeply affected the personal and professional lives of all healthcare providers, but specifically nurses, who spend the most time at the bedside. 

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Nursing Knowledge is Key to Curing Coma

One person can have an idea, but more often than not, innovation requires teamwork. In 2022, there are no evidence-based interventions proven to wake a patient from coma. By creating a worldwide collaborative, the Curing Coma Campaign aims to change that.

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First Midwest Hospital Maker Space for Nurses

I run the first nurse-led hospital makerspace in the Midwest! What does this mean? Generate is a physical space on the main level of the hospital where team members can come to develop, create, or brainstorm about ideas they have.

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For Oklahoma’s Nursing Leaders, Necessity is the Mother of Collaboration

Long before the pandemic, Oklahoma was struggling with a shortage of registered nurses (RNs). In the early 2000s, the Oklahoma Nurses Association (ONA) and Oklahoma Hospital Association were building task forces with the sole purpose of addressing the gap between RN supply and demand, an issue they never fully resolved. Then cometh COVID-19.

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Association of Rehabilitation Nurses’ Innovation: Competency Model for Professional Rehabilitation Nursing

Learn how the ARN’s Competency Model (CM) is an innovative contribution to the nursing profession and a model for other specialty organizations. Learn how this innovative competency revision is advancing nurse-led interventions, that focus on the understanding of the worldview of individuals who are culturally different, reflecting a multicultural approach, and global reach.

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The Canvas of Health: Preparing leaders to design with patients, populations, and systems for a healthier future.

The Kuna Indians in Panama, my nation of birth, weave intricate layers of fabric and thread together to create beautiful displays of art called a Mola. Some, are geometric and abstract in design while others intricate scenes of nature, all displaying symbols and features unique to Panamanian culture, health, and everyday life.

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ANA Individual Innovation Award Blog – “You Can Do This”

I am a critical care bedside nurse with an idea of how to improve patient care and education for patients and their families.  Being a recipient of the 2021 ANA Individual Innovation Award, I can finally see my vision for training new trach patients, and their caregivers, so they are discharged to home in comfort and with confidence, becoming real.

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From startup to scaleup: Lavender Psychiatry

After 45 days of intense planning and hustle, Lavender was launched by Brighid and I (Pritma) on May 4, 2020. It was an exciting yet anticlimactic (think ‘crickets’) moment, not atypical for startups. The work was only just beginning as we closed the month off with 3 completed appointments - a somber start to our startup journey.

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What are the Skills Needed to be a Nurse Innovator?

What skills do you need to be a nurse innovator? A great many things, though this question is a bit misleading as I firmly believe nurses already possess many of the skills necessary. In fact, I would argue that most nurses are already innovating, having an innovative prowess that is innate to the profession.

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Nurses Face Startling Setbacks When Trying to Innovate

Emory School of Nursing is determined to change that. Emory School of Nursing is breaking the cycle by giving students and nurses in practice access to the tools they need to learn and apply critical new skillsets. Everything we develop is designed for accessibility and made to be shared.

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Help the American Nurses Foundation Reimagine the Future of Nursing

Nurses deliver high-quality, accessible, and equitable care for all Americans. Many health care experts and advocates lament that the current health care system under-develops, under-utilizes, and under-appreciates nurses.

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Supporting a Culture of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) in Nursing

The Future of Nursing report from the Institute of Medicine, called on health care organizations to support and help nurses take the lead in developing and adopting innovative, patient-centered care models and to engage nurses and other front-line staff in the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of medical and health devices, health information technology products, and entrepreneurial opportunities.

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The Future of Nursing: A paradigm shifting moment

There is much innovation literature that describes the reasons that industries and markets transform over time. One of the catalysts of dramatic change in industries when they experience unthinkable events. 

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Adding Innovation to Nursing Education

Within the first two years of my nursing career, I grew quite frustrated with the daily inefficiencies in care delivery that I encountered while trying to provide patient care.

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Nursing Health Through Architecture

Many nursing theorists defined the ‘environment’, but the earliest connection between nursing and architecture can be attributed to Florence Nightingale and her description of hospital design (Nightingale, 1860).

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How to Pitch: Leave them wanting more

Your ideas are too important not to be heard. Learning to “pitch” your ideas is a wonderful way to organize and present your thoughts so that others will hear and understand what you are saying.

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Develop an Innovation Mindset: Leaders Create the Future

As the complexity of health care and nursing intensifies, nurses are challenged to think creatively and develop innovations that advance the knowledge, learning, and service contributions of our discipline to the health care enterprise.

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We Just Jumped

So how does a leading School of Nursing go from a few bullet points on a white board to having a vibrant innovation program boasting over a dozen nurse innovators, eight newly registered inventions and three new product launches in just under two years? The short answer is, like parachutists in a freefall, we just jumped. 

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Calling All Nurses: Take a Chance and Make a Change!

“Never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.” - Florence Nightingale

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Instructiderm™ Creates Skin Lesion Models for Learning

What happens when nurses identify a big problem and have an idea to help solve that problem? We innovate. First, we would like to speak about the problems we identified- skin cancer and the lack of standardized dermatology education. Next, we will share our invention, Instructional Dermatology Surface Models (IDSMsTM).

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A Startup: A Nurses Journey Up A Mountain

Yesterday I was on a mountaintop in Alaska. I hiked to a waterfall with my fiancé Brian and we looked upward past the waterfall. We saw a path that led up through the trees. We looked at each other and smiled. "Let’s see where this road leads us," he says.

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Six Innovation Traps to Avoid During A Pandemic and Beyond

Nurses are inherently innovators by our very nature.  But innovator is not always a word that comes to mind when someone hears the word “nurse.”  And, ironically, it is not often a word we use to describe ourselves as a profession.

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My Journey as a Nurse Innovator

I am a registered nurse with many years of experience in nursing and teaching nursing as a faculty member. The lack of adequate patient hand hygiene always bothered me and I never quite figured out how to effectively provide hand hygiene that patients could do independently.

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Covid and 19 Ways to Innovate

With all of the negative memes circulating the web, you would think nothing good has come from the year 2020. We have been inundated with news of the wildfires in Australia, accelerated global warming, increased racial tensions, sky-high unemployment - and of course Covid-19 - one of the worst pandemics in recorded history. 

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New Light on Innovative Nursing

He stood before an attentive audience with his hands high, as if holding a newborn. Using a high-pitched voice (“Look here, little Joey. Can you see me?”), he enticed the “baby” to look at him and follow his moving face.

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