Nursing Innovation Blogs and Articles

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 Articles and Blogs

Redefining Health Care: A nurse's guide to innovation and challenging the status quo

Whether you're just beginning your innovation journey or are well on your way, with an open mind, a creative spirit, and a relentless pursuit of excellence, there are no limits to what we can achieve!

When You Can't Pick a Hat, Just Wear Them All

"One of the challenges of wearing so many hats is that I love each and every one of them!" ~ Andrea Davis Pickney

Fostering a Culture of Innovation: A Nurse Manager’s Call to Action

“Nurse managers have a crucial role to play in promoting innovation and improvement. It’s time we champion our frontline staff’s ideas and advocate for dedicated time for innovation and improvement projects."

ANA Individual Innovation Award Winner: Rebecca Williams

“If you run into pushback, try your idea a little differently. Don’t give up,” she said. “Fail forward and fail fast. Hold onto your own innovation spirit and tenacity. You can do it.”

How The Nursing Beat Founders Tamara AL-Yassin and Hannah Berns Created a One-Of-A-Kind Nursing Community

The Nursing Beat (TNB) aims to inform, connect, and empower every nurse by balancing entertaining short-form content with relevant nursing news. Today, TNB is the only digital daily newsletter on the market for nurses. This distinction has garnered recognition from publications such as Healthcare Brew, Fast Company, Medscape, Minority Nurse, and more.

Medical Necessity to Life’s Mission: A Mother’s Motivation Drives Nursing Innovation

JUST DO IT! The problems are everywhere, and nurses are in the best position to identify those needs.

2023 ANA Individual Innovation Award Winner: Robin Austin

“The first time I saw our (MyStrengths+MyHealth (MSMH) mobile app) dashboards outside of the OR, I was struck by it,” said Robin Austin, PhD, DNP, DC, RN-BC, FAMIA, FNAP. “I was inspired by how much it helped decrease the anxiety of patients’ families as they saw where things were going in their procedure.”

2023 ANA Innovation Award Honorable Mention: Sherri Wilson, DNP, MPA, FAAN

Wilson encourages nurses who are embarking on their own innovation journey to trust that they belong in the spaces in which they never saw themselves. “You’re there because you’re supposed to be there. You have the power to create and make things happen. Keep going!”

2023 ANA Innovation Award Honorable Mention: Denise Hopkins-Chadwick, PhD, RN

Start small until you create revenue, but don’t be afraid – if you go big and you need to pull back, that’s what you do. No good idea is ready before it’s time, and who knows if the time is right if you don’t start trying.

ANA Individual Innovation Award Winner: Kathleen Puri

“Surround yourself with supportive people who encourage you. Support can come from many people – in addition to my family, one of my most eager supporters was the patent attorney I worked with,” Puri said.

ANA Innovation Award 2019 Team Winner: Paul Coyne and Michael Wang

“We want to inspire other nurses, we want them to know that if you’re willing to sacrifice, that it’s possible for them to do as well” Coyne said. “No one is speaking that way to nurses. No one is speaking that way to clinical individuals, so all the innovation that is happening is not happening with the people who know the work best.”

ANA 2020 Innovation Award Team Winner: Joey Ferry and Taofiki Gafar-Schaner

One of the biggest pieces of advice Ferry and Gafar-Schaner would give to nurse innovators is to practice financial wellness and know when to lean on your support systems.

Partnering with Community Health Workers: Empowering Key Health Mediators in Chronic Care Management

With the COVID-19 pandemic exposing health care inequities and putting stress on the fractures in our health system, I realized it was necessary to create a program for the collective care of minoritized folks.

The Professional Is Personal: A Nurse’s Journey to Building a New Health Care Model

I was seven years old when I decided to pursue a career in pediatrics. That was when my brother passed away from a congenital heart defect.

Sorry, do I know you? A Critical Care Nurse’s Journey to Redefine Patient Identity Through Digital Health Innovation

“Coming in hot!” was all I heard before seeing a crowd of residents and nurses racing down the hall with a hospital bed. Unfortunately, our John Doe was unconscious and arrived without identification, so surgeons had to proceed without consent.

Lessons, Not Failures: It All Starts at the First Step

Have you ever seen something shiny and new, and immediately thought, “I NEED TO BREAK THAT!”

Educational Gaming: The Future of Health Care

We've all heard the saying, "It's all fun and games until someone loses a limb!" But what if fun and games could save someone's limb? Or their life?

What Clinical Competencies Are Essential for New Nurses?

After graduating, I landed my dream nursing job in an intensive care unit, but uneasiness and self-doubt about my clinical competency drove me to resign from the ICU within a year.

An Innovative Approach to Harnessing Whole-Person Health Data

It all began with the idea of providing patients or consumers a voice within healthcare that is also represented in health care data. This work grew from my passion and strong interest in the patient engagement movement.

Revolutionizing Travel Nurse Housing: Introducing Nursesbnb

My path to innovation came shortly after I witnessed my colleague, a fellow travel nurse working the night shift, struggle to find suitable housing.

A Leap of Faith: Navigating Health Care Innovation with Intuition and Open-Mindedness

Cultivating an open mind empowers us to embrace unconventional ideas, cutting-edge technologies, and audacious approaches that can revolutionize health care. By challenging the status quo, we can discover inventive solutions that boost efficiency, accuracy, and patient outcomes.

Nurse-Engineer Teams: Creating the Next Generation of Health Care Innovation Leaders

Nurses are in a position to identify and address everyday health care issues, challenge assumptions and the status quo, address unrecognized needs, and ensure that clinical outcomes research serves as the foundation for validating the effectiveness of innovation.

Innovation in Nursing: Paving the Way for the Future

As a person committed to lifelong learning, I’ve always carried a passion for education, science, and making the world a better place. I guess it all started with my parents.

Innovation Through the Voice of the Direct Care Nurse

There are moments in your professional career that change you. The Art of Questioning event did just that.

A Perioperative Nurses Innovation Journey

I’ve always considered myself a creative person when it comes to problem solving, but it wasn’t until I started working as a Unit Educator (UE) in the OR at The University of Kansas Health System (TUKHS) that this skill became invaluable.

Give Bedside Nurses a Reason to Stay: Tech That Works | ANA

Read the personal story of a nurse who turned burnout into nursing innovation by creating virtual technology that can encourage nurses to stay in the profession.

Nurses have a powerful voice. We help them use it.

Have you ever wondered, what the pandemic would have looked like if we’d had more health professionals – more nurses – in elected office? Learn why you may want to attend Campaign School!

Direct Care Nurses Leading Innovation

Most nurses do not see themselves as innovators. The AACN's Clinical Scene Investigator (CSI) Academy wants to change that.

From Duct Tape to Digital Health: Empowering Families with Secure Health Technology

In 2015, I put a countdown timer on my phone for January 1, 2026. This is when the first Baby Boomer turns 80. I thought this was when all the duct tape, string, and glue nurses use to keep healthcare functional would begin to fall apart.

It Doesn't Happen Overnight

I had some big out there "Star Trek" ideas. I wasn’t yet familiar with the concept of nursing innovation; I was more concerned about making medication errors.

Designing For the Future

Nursing intuition begets health design intuition. I believed with design training, I could be at the front end of patient care, co-creating the structure that frames our processes and outcomes.

Meeting Patients Where They Are

After a long day I was approached by an elderly gentleman who said, “estas haciendo el trabjo de los ángeles” which roughly translated means, “you are doing the work of angels.” He then shook my hand and thanked me.

Medical Improv: A Surprising Intervention for Critical Outcomes

You don’t often connect improv with the improvisations that happen across healthcare daily. Learn the potential of improv training to advance healthcare outcomes. Read how using improv to design fun and engaging ways can improve communication, collaboration, and organizational culture.

The Impetus for Sadie’s Place

My primary career was as a full scope midwife. Like many others, my professional and personal life has taken different roads, a few far off the more common path. But that is what’s great about nursing, isn’t it?

DNPs of Color: Changing the Game and Forging New Paths

In creating DNPs of Color, I never anticipated that it would grow into the movement that it has become today. Staying true to the mission of seeking ways to inspire and empower others has always led me down pathways towards dismantling the status quo.

Interview with Michael Pickett, MSN, APRN, CPNP

Interview with Michael Pickett, MSN, APRN, CPNP; Winner of the 2022 ANA Team Innovation Award; RediStik® Wearable Simulation Task Trainers

Interview with KaSheta Johnson Jackson, DNP, RN

Interview with KaSheta Johnson Jackson, DNP, RN; Winner of the 2022 ANA Individual Innovation Award; Community Pop-Ups: A Rural Approach

Innovation Leadership through Polarity Dynamics

How often do you see things that others do not? Improving performance, decreasing error, and fostering standards and controls are necessary in health care today, however each of us should be curious and sensitive to the contradictions, connections, and coincidences that we experience.

Unlikely Partnerships Spark Creativity

An unexpected benefit of innovation work is that you have the opportunity to form new relationships outside of healthcare. What started as a basic idea expanded beyond what I could’ve imagined on my own. But that’s the point of working with people unlike you, isn’t it?

CommUNITY Pop-Ups

BE CREATIVE “THROW NOODLES AT THE WALLS” This is my philosophy for innovation!! Our innovation was and continued to be empowered by the need to change health care delivery and partner with the community.

Nurse Utilizes Innovation to Create a Health Equity Media Outlet

As a Nurse Entrepreneur, creating and implementing new ideas in healthcare was something I’ve always done. In the roles of mentor, speaker, and author I’ve often been called upon to think outside the box. Once the pandemic hit, I was forced to do some “soul searching” when I saw the devastating effects of the pandemic, specifically towards Black Americans.

Virtual Nursing: What is it?

You might be asking: why do we need “virtual” nurses when we don’t even have enough physical nurses at the bedside? That’s exactly why we do need them. Virtual RNs can support the team at the bedside to alleviate the workload and provide greater satisfaction for both the patients and the nursing staff.

Frontline Frustrations Spark Innovative Solutions

Twenty years into my healthcare career as a pediatric nurse practitioner, I knew a change was needed to further my own personal and professional growth. What I didn’t know was that change would be becoming a leader of frontline innovation in healthcare. I was given valuable advice by a mentor who taught me “Innovation cannot be done alone.”

Pandemic Escape

In 2019, Kristy Causey, MSN, RN and Gracia Boseman, RN, MPH leveraged the concept of the escape room to teach nurses about infection prevention in a fun and impactful way. One year later, the escape room evolved into a Pandemic Preparedness Escape Bus. Learn how these simulated scenarios have made all the difference!

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.