Cultivating Innovation in Nursing

Even though nursing is a healthcare profession that can be traced back centuries, the field is constantly trying to encourage the innovation process.

Nurse-led innovation can help improve patient care, nursing management, and the healthcare system at large.

What Defines Innovation in Nursing?

Innovation in the nursing practice is defined as any changes to established processes and methods to help nurses help patients. A culture of innovation in nursing extends to all aspects of nursing from the frontline patient experience to nursing education.

Innovation often relies on incorporating new technology and methods to face new threats, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, but it also includes changing long-standing processes that might not be as efficient.

The Importance of Creativity and Innovation in Nursing

Nurses are the frontline caregivers in most medical situations, including hospitals. Making sure that all clinicians are empowered to suggest and implement innovative ideas as they see fit can, in some cases, literally be the difference between life and death.

Fostering a culture of innovation can improve patient safety and overall well-being in real-time situations, as opposed to waiting for those more removed from the front lines of patient care.

What Makes Nurses Innovative?

The primary factor that makes nurses innovative is being able to work in a culture of innovation. According to the American Nurses Association (ANA), when hospitals promote an entrepreneurship-minded environment for healthcare providers to work in, there is a much higher chance of seeing innovation.

One of the main ways that innovation can happen for nurses is to use design thinking. This is a process that relies on five steps to create and test ideas.

The five stages of design thinking are empathy, defining, brainstorm, develop a prototype, and test.

• Nurses use empathy to put themselves into the shoes of their patients to fully understand their needs and problems.
• Once a problem is identified, it must be clearly defined to help all stakeholders understand the issue, this is often done with a problem statement or some other document.
• At this stage of design thinking, brainstorming is essential to present as many solutions as possible to the problem.
• Prototypes for a design or process need to be made to establish what will be tried.
• Lastly, the prototype method needs to be tested in real time to see if it solves the problem for the nurses or the patients.

For healthcare professionals in management or nursing leadership roles, multiple steps can be taken to encourage a mindset and environment primed for healthcare innovation initiatives:

• encourage open and free discussion about current workflows
• incorporate new technology and informatics whenever possible
• include innovation sessions in planning meetings
• take advantage of traveling nurses to see what is being used elsewhere
• use evidence-based practice to streamline processes

The Impact of Innovation on Nursing and Healthcare

The nursing profession is greatly impacted by innovation, with some aspects being affected even more than others.

Nearly all nursing innovations have one goal: providing quality care. Improving healthcare delivery methods helps to promote a better state of public health. As seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses were innovating better methods to provide care more effectively while increasing patient safety. Metrics gathered daily by nurses can be used to inform decisions at every stage of care.

Any innovation attempts highly impact nursing students because of how nursing school changes with new and improved methods and technologies being implemented. When innovation occurs on the frontlines of healthcare, it eventually makes its way into the school of nursing curriculum at colleges and universities.

Does Innovation Influence the Performance of Healthcare Organizations?

Innovation can greatly influence the performance of healthcare organizations. Nurse leaders work directly with healthcare delivery, where the performance of a healthcare organization is truly measured.

Nursing research done in the field can lead to improved methods for healthcare delivery and overall practices in an organization. This not only can improve patient care, but also help with some of the more administrative features of a hospital. Innovation can help save money and time in a healthcare organization.

How Can Nurse Innovation Improve Patient Outcomes?

Patient outcomes are greatly impacted by nurse innovation and, in most cases, improved. Innovation can lead to better delivery of medicine, physical care, and even simple things like features of hospital rooms to make patients more comfortable.

What Are Examples of Innovations in Nursing?

There are several examples of innovations in nursing, including:

• improving healthcare technology, like the rise in telehealth
• changing patient care methods like delivery of medicine
• expedited nursing licenses to get more workers in the field

It's hard to make a comprehensive list of all the innovations in nursing because of how much the field of nursing changes daily with improved processes and technology.

The Future of Nursing: How Technology Is Driving Innovations in Nursing Care

One of the biggest opportunities for innovation in nursing is the ever-growing availability of technology. As shown in the pandemic, telehealth allows nurses to help patients who never go to a hospital, as well as allowing nurses to provide care to patients around the world.

AI will also have benefits for nurses with abilities to comb through metrics and data almost instantly, allowing the nurses to do what they do best: delivering high-quality care.

Skills Nurses Need To Be Innovators

Having certain skills will make nurses more likely to be innovative:

• persistence to continue through adversity
• creativity to look for opportunities for growth and change
• determination to help their patients
• flexibility to try new things
• good teamwork and communication skills