How Nurses Are Driving Innovation

From administrative paperwork to workplace safety, nurses encounter problems that can be difficult to see from outside daily patient care. Hospitals and health systems are drawing on that experience to develop tools for improving workflows, supporting new nurses and strengthening communication with patients and colleagues.

“Nursing staff are uniquely positioned to drive solutions to healthcare challenges. They’re closest to the patient, and they understand that collaboration is essential to every part of our work,” Ryannon Frederick, chief nursing officer of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, told the hospital’s news network.

Examples from Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins and Johnson & Johnson Nurse Innovation Fellowship recipients illustrate the range of this work. Several remain proposals or early-stage initiatives, making their development and testing important distinctions when assessing their potential.

1 | Improving Outcomes with Community-Based Care

The “Neighborhood Nursing” model from the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing in Baltimore aims to increase access to health and social services, reduce spending and improve individual and community outcomes. Neighborhood nurses are stationed in hubs such as libraries, laundromats and schools, and they treat everyone, regardless of insurance status, age, gender or income. By making preventive care more convenient, this strategy can reduce emergency room visits, inpatient admissions and readmissions.

2 | Streamlining Paperwork with an AI Agent

At Nursing Nexus, an annual Mayo Clinic event, finalists in the Department of Nursing AI Agent Competition presented tools developed in response to workplace challenges. One AI tool streamlines the completion of leave and disability paperwork for patients; the agent can lighten administrative workloads for care teams while reducing wait times for patients.

3 | Making Workplaces Safer with Technology

As frontline staff, nurses have valuable insight into workplace violence and how to prevent it. At Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, California, nursing leaders designed GuardianClip, an intelligent safety device worn as part of a badge holder. The device leverages behavioral monitoring and a discreet alarm system to alert clinicians and nearby colleagues to escalating situations.

At the University of Maryland Baltimore Washington Medical Center in Glen Burnie, nurses developed PEACE (Physiological Evaluation and Crisis Escalation), a platform designed to help prevent workplace violence. Using electronic medical record data and real-time monitoring, the platform identifies patients at risk for behavioral escalation and alerts care team members, security personnel and behavioral health specialists.

4 | Supporting Career Development and Workforce Sustainability

Nurse-developed tools also aim to support career development, improving job satisfaction and retention. To ease the transition from nursing school to the workplace, the team at CommonSpirit Saint Anthony Hospital in Chicago created Clinical Compass, a navigation tool that helps new nurses find mentors, support and professional development resources. Similarly, the EMBER program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital facilitates mentorship and professional development.

Other nurse-led innovations make daily work more rewarding. Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, created the Moments that Matter initiative to celebrate nurses’ contributions.

An upcoming AHA Leadership Scan, sponsored by Unitek, will explore nursing workforce development and whether it can pay for itself. Save your spot today.

5 | Facilitating Communication for Better Outcomes

Communication is key to optimal outcomes in healthcare, and nurses have plenty of ideas for improving it. The team at Beth Israel Lahey Health in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has created a secure communication solution to improve collaboration between surgical residents and nurses. The platform ensures the right information reaches the right individual at the right time, minimizing back-and-forth exchanges.

Nurses at Naval Medical Center Camp Lejeune in North Carolina developed MPATHe, a tool designed to improve information flow among care teams, patients and families. At NYC Health + Hospitals/Queens in Jamaica, New York, Surgical Navigator aims to improve communication and coordination throughout surgical care. Yale New Haven Health’s Bridgeport Hospital in Connecticut developed NavigatER to help patients and families understand the next steps in an emergency department visit.

At the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, nurse leaders designed IMPROVE (IMprovement and PRocess Optimization Visual Engine) to provide a structured pathway for nurses to point out challenges, propose solutions and participate in innovation.

Finally, the team at Atrium Health Pineville in Charlotte, North Carolina, created Listen Linda to establish a more effective system for nurses and leaders to relay concerns, ideas and feedback.

The Bottom Line for Hospitals and Health Systems

These initiatives show how nurses are identifying problems in care delivery and developing responses, from communication tools to new approaches to workforce support. Giving nurses opportunities to develop, test and refine these ideas can help turn frontline insights into improvements in patient care and hospital operations.