The concept of Nurse Innovation: Nature has been established.
Nurses are naturally clever, resourceful, resilient and use alternative methods to deliver timely, quality, evidence-based care for patients instinctively whenever necessary.
Nurses need encouragement to move innovations to the bedside and become practice creators, to meet the objectives of why healthcare inventions are developed and used in practice: to provide safe, high-value care, improve patient outcomes and experience in all workplace settings. Nurse Innovation: Nurture.
Opportunities will arise for creativity. When they do, have an awareness of when these situations surface and understand that you can create change. The need for a workaround is a perfect example of identifying a problem that needs fixing and an opportunity to solve a system, process, or policy issue and invent tools, new workflows, and documentation that will improve and evolve patient care.
Tactical, actionable techniques of nurse creation are essential for you to understand in fast-moving clinical and support environments today to improve care delivery.
These three key strategies will spark change in your practice:
- Having an idea that will improve care for patient care delivery or workplace improvement
- Getting leadership and colleague buy-in to inspire adoption that will create change
- Moving quickly to rapidly make the change, including planning, testing, and training
While these are creativity basics nurses regularly use in specific specializations such as nursing informatics and education, quality improvement and risk management, they don’t always move to the bedside. But Nurse Innovation: Nurture. It can be encouraged, learned and put into practice successfully in diverse clinical settings.
Many universities are now offering applied innovation specialties in nursing studies including Arizona State University, Drexel University, and Northeastern University. A common thread in these programs is that they combine technology, data, and creativity (TDC)-based curriculums that trigger innovation, and provide nurses with hands-on experiences such as hackathons and design thinking projects. These unique programs teach nurses when, why and how to create new ways of caring.
With practice, you can apply your creativity in any work setting. What you need is personal drive, courage and a spirit of leadership to change things for the better. Nurse Innovation: Nurture.
Join the Evolution and get TDC and Evolving Nursing Practice. This introduction to TDC will get you started to learn how tech, data, and creativity concepts will nurture your path to innovation in your practice setting today.