A blueprint for Nursing Innovation? I’m super-stoked about this resource. I missed it in its original release. Thankfully, it was republished recently on social media so that I can share it with you now!


An easily accessible, actionable, and much-needed guide about nurse innovation leadership was released in 2016: The Innovation Road Map: A Guide for Nurse Leaders. Three notable authors and contributors, Dr. Bonnie Clipper, DNP, RN, MA, MBA, CENP, FACHEDr. Rebecca Freeman, PhD, RN, and Dr. Roy L. Simpson, DNP, RN, FAAN,FACMI, are national nursing informatics and innovation leaders.

This essential guide can be used to educate nurse leaders to encourage the use of innovation concepts and tactics in their organizations, specifically for nurses in care delivery environments.  The creation of this valuable resource is two-fold: Nurses don’t know about innovation and its connection to the future of clinical practice, and only a hand full of nurses are talking about it.  We are in the infancy of nurse innovation and are feeling our way through what it is, how to do it and how nurse leaders must respond to get innovation concepts to nurses in the clinical setting for the dissemination of evidence-based practice. This resource will jumpstart that.

This roadmap has several well-organized and written sections, including the characteristics and components of innovation, and team collaboration for leading change. It’s digestible and details theories and frameworks and specific actions nurse leaders can take to engage nurse innovation in the wild, to invent new ways of caring in modern healthcare.

The section of the guide that pertains to nurses in care settings is ‘Team Collaboration: Innovation in Action’. It describes how teams can work together to construct innovation projects. This part details five strategies that promote innovative team collaboration: developing nurse innovation teams with unlikely and varying members; promoting productive interaction; considering all communication styles; using play to stimulate creativity; including pauses and breaks during innovative work sessions; and developing skill sets to make the collaborative process more creative and efficient.

We’re at in the infancy stage with nursing innovation and has been for some time. While this guide and other resources, such as Leadership for Evidence-Based Innovation in Nursing and Health Professions, are available for those in nurse leadership, a change is still needed.

Now’s the time for all nurses, including those not in leadership, to use this valuable resource and autonomously study, adopt these concepts and institute them where it counts – in care delivery settings. Also, where nursing policies and procedures are developed, and in project management, quality improvement and operational excellence departments that are frequently nurse-led. These are the invaluable teams in healthcare organizations that identify issues in evidence-based care, understand change management and can sustain new nursing practices that result from innovation projects.

This guide will help nurses in all care delivery environments, clinical and non-clinical professionals begin to innovate. It is a wonderful resource to inspire the evolution of nursing practice, and it affirms that commitment from leadership can advance nurses’ innovation knowledge.

So, Hit the Road! The Innovation Road Map: A Guide for Nurse Leaders 


What to know more about how nurse innovation can evolve nursing practice in your work setting? Join the Evolution and get TDC and Evolving Nursing Practice – it will jumpstart your learning about how tech, data, and creativity (TDC) will invent what’s next in nursing.