NURSING INNOVATION SPECIAL ISSUE 2021
PRESENTED BY:
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Table of Contents
In This Issue 3
Editor’s Notebook
Features: 4
Nurse Hackathons: Reshaping the Future of the Nursing Profession By Nicolas Gennaro Sciasci, MS
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Lumify Care’s Jennifferre Mancillas on Their Breakthrough Nurse-Led Startup By Koren Thomas
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Merging Cyberspace and Classroom Space: Student Preferences versus Faculty Practices By Celeste M. Alfes, DNP, MSN, MBA, CNE, CHSE-A, FAAN
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OSU‘s Tim Raderstorf: Planting the Seeds to Grow a Culture of Health Care Innovation By Koren Thomas
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Nursing Innovation Special Issue 2021
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Editor’s Notebook Innovation in Nursing? Of Course! Nurses are masters of thinking on their feet and accustomed to devising solutions on the fly. In fact, “Nursing Innovation” is really just a new term for an approach to something that nurses have been doing all along. Working within the system, or on their own as entrepreneurs, nurse innovators are now collaborating with software developers, manufacturers, and other businesses to bring their solutions to the marketplace. A major force behind many nurse disruptors is the emergence of nurse hackathons. The biggest nursing hackathon on the current US scene is the #NurseHack4Health series, sponsored by the Society of Nurse Scientists, Innovators, Entrepreneurs, and Leaders (SONSIEL), Johnson & Johnson (J&J), and Microsoft. What happens at a hackathon? In Nurse Hackathons: Reshaping the Future of the Nursing Profession, Nicolas Gennaro Sciasci offers an explainer for all of you nascent Nurse Hackers. Nurse innovators are making their mark as entrepreneurs on a national scale. As the first nurse-run startup to receive backing from the fabled Y Combinator and the first nurse-inventors to be featured in a New York Times story, Lumify and its founders are not resting on their laurels. Founded by a pair of nurses who worked in tandem at the 2019 J&J hackathon, Lumify is growing by leaps and bounds. In this issue, we spoke with cofounder Jennifferre Mancillas about their trailblazing journey and plans for 2022.
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During the pandemic, innovation has also played a key role in nurse education. The nursing classroom of today depends on a rich variety of communication breakthroughs that enable distance learning and training. But do Gen Z’s BSN students see eye-to-eye with nursing faculty on the explosion of tech options available in the 2020 classroom (real or virtual)? Celeste Alfes, DNP, MSN, MBA, CNE, CHSE-A, FAAN offers a look at the communication technologies employed by nursing schools. Many nurse educators have already incorporated innovation into their nursing programs. One of the nerve centers of the nurse-maker movement is parked at The Ohio State University. To Tim Raderstorf, MSN, RN, the co-founder of the OSU Innovation Studio at the OSU School of Nursing, nurses and innovation may be an even more powerful combination than peanut butter and chocolate. In our last Innovation article, Raderstorf explains why. So, collect your pain points, brainstorm some solutions, and get ready to disrupt! —Koren Thomas
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Nurse Hackathons: Reshaping the Future of the Nursing Profession BY NICOLAS GENNARO Sciasci, MS
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urse/Innovator/ Disrupter Rebecca Love has said that nurses are the truest of innovators, which would certainly explain their innate ability to solve healthcare’s most critical challenges. From care delivery to workforce issues plaguing the profession, nurse hackathons are a dynamic way to source solutions by bringing together a diverse group of problem solvers and empowering them to improve health, healthcare, and the health workforce, regardless of geographical location. But how did they get started? It started with an idea back in early 2019, when a group of nurses from the Society of Nurse Scientists, Innovators, Entrepreneurs, and Leaders (SONSIEL) recognized a need for nurses to be recognized as
innovators and receive the support and motivation deserved to advance the profession and revolutionize the healthcare arena. As the leading nursing innovation and entrepreneurship organization, they set off to create, build, and scale nurse hackathons globally designed to showcase nurses’ importance and impact. Shortly after, SONSIEL joined forces with Johnson & Johnson to launch their November 2019 Nurse Hackathon set to change the future of human health in only fifty-six hours. Nurses, healthcare professionals, technologists, and other experts from a wide range of expertise joined forces to develop tangible solutions to address care delivery challenges. The level of energy, excitement, and collaboration generated during the weekend overwhelmingly contributed
to its success but was, unfortunately, short-lived. As history would tell us, the world came to a screeching halt as the Sars-Cov-2 novel coronavirus infiltrated every inch of our globe. Nurses, healthcare professionals, and frontline workers were thus working around the clock to help save the lives of thousands of patients infected with the virus. As a result, SONSIEL and Johnson & Johnson quickly partnered with Microsoft and dev up to establish the first NurseHack4Health: COVID19 Virtual Hackathon, presented during National Nurses Month in May 2020 and the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife, amidst the intensity of the COVID-19 health crisis. Hundreds of nurses and experts from diverse backgrounds gathered virtually to find solutions to address the
multitude of challenges facing frontline workers during the pandemic. From digital telehealth tools to platforms that host recorded messages from a loved one for nurses to play for patients on-demand, the momentum continued to help bring these solutions to life through access to engineering tools, mentorship and coaching opportunities, and more. During the following months, a multitude of health challenges emerged as the pandemic intensified. The organizers, SONSIEL, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, and dev up set a date for a November 2020 and subsequently, a May 2021 NurseHack4Health, to find ways to leverage technology to improve access to reliable, trusted education and communication amid a pandemic to improve access to care. History was made during
these two intense and thrilling weekends as hacker teams developed viable innovative solutions that were quickly deployable and aligned with the hackathon’s theme and tracks. Solutions included a universal method for reporting health-related misinformation, an app that could turn vaccine information into accurate information in real-time, and a gamified mental health platform geared towards adolescents. These solutions are what the NurseHack4Health and nurse hackathons are set out to achieve. It isn’t simply a hackathon- it’s a weekend of harvesting nurses’ innovative spirits through collaboration and an eagerness to solve the critical challenges facing the nursing workforce, healthcare, and care delivery. On November 5 -7, 2021, NurseHack4Health: Building a Sustainable Nursing Workforce
of the Future was the fourth in a series of hackathons made possible through a unique collaboration by SONSIEL, Johnson & Johnson, and Microsoft. To date, more than 3,000 nurses from the United States and around the globe have participated. The November hackathon’s theme was the first to directly address a critical challenge facing the nursing profession: retention and recruitment. Accounting for fifty percent of the global health workforce, we need your help inventing new models to attract and retain our nurses. Whether you are joining for the first time or are a seasoned hacker coming to the table with an idea and a team, NurseHack4Health is a global platform for any nurse, nursing student, health worker, developer, and other experts with an idea, insight, and desire to collaborate and invent. You
may be asking, but how does it work? It’s simple. As part of the event, participants create their own teams or join other teams to be mentored by nursing leaders, entrepreneurs, and developers. By the end of the weekend, teams will have developed minimally viable products (MVPs) to be rapidly applied in healthcare settings. A panel of judges with expertise in innovation, technology, and business will evaluate teams’ pitches for their impact on human health, innovativeness, completeness, marketentry speed, and scalability. All final MVP solutions will be open-source intellectual property. The code will be uploaded to the GitHub software development platform so that hospitals, health systems, and community-based organizations can easily access and deploy the solutions.
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Ready to become the ultimate white hat hacker? Ponder your pain points, and later this winter, check https:// nursehack4health.org/ and SONSIEL’s https://sonsiel.org/ news-about-hackathons for details on the next event. Nervous about your technical skills? Not to worry! NurseHack4Health offers multiple training sessions during the weeks leading up to the event to provide you the skills necessary to succeed. And remember, it all starts with an idea, and only together can we reshape the future of the nursing profession. Nicholas (Nico) Gennaro Sciasci, MS, is a contributor to SONSIELSociety of Nurse Scientists Innovators Entrepreneurs and Leaders and subject matter expert on nurse mobility and migration, and nursing workforce challenges.
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Lumify Care’s Jennifferre Mancillas on Their Breakthrough Nurse-Led Startup BY KOREN Thomas
Jenniferre Mancillas, BSN, RN, NC-NIC, with Lumify Care cofounder, Penn State nursing student-entrepreneur Anthony Scarpone-Lambert.
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umify Care, the nurseled start-up featured in the New York Times early this year, is on fire. Health care workers love the uNight Light, and the Lumify team are blazing new trails as the first start-up run by nurses to receive backing from the fabled seed-money startup accelerator Y Combinator. DailyNurse first covered the Lumify story in February, when the focus was on 21-year-old Anthony Scarpone-Lambert, the nursing studententrepreneur who partnered with Jennifferre Mancillas, BSN, RN, RNC-NIC at the fateful first Johnson & Johnson nursing hackathon where their uNight Light concept won first place. We met with Jennifferre to learn more about their big break and discuss the distinctive skill sets that make nurses a vital – and as yet, barely tapped – force in the world of health care innovation. DailyNurse: Can you recap the background of Lumify and the uNight Light? How did you end up becoming the first nurse-innovators to get backing from Y Combinator? Jennifferre Mancillas: Well, we created Lumify Care because of experiences that we had at the bedside - not being able to see or not having the tools and resources we needed to be able to care for our patients. DN: Then, in February, Lumify caught the attention of the New York Times! JM: The Times article was really surprising. We were completely shocked and didn’t anticipate that it [the uNight Light] would be so readily adopted by nurses and health care workers.
But it makes sense that it was - because we understood the problem and the pain point, and we’ve experienced it. Between February to today’s date, we have some 10,000 users at over 250 different hospitals. And we’re getting ready to finish up our design for our second version of the light, and our second product that will come out later this year. So we are exceptionally excited by all the growth that we’ve seen.
“There had never been a nurse-led team to be selected or accepted into Y Combinator to participate. So, when we got the Yes - the phone call that we were accepted - we were completely floored. We’re super grateful for the opportunity to be able to kind of pave the way for other nurses and nurse entrepreneurs and innovators to be seen on a bigger playing field.” DN: Can you tell us how things happened with Y Combinator? JM: When we applied for Y Combinator, I didn’t think we were going to be selected because the acceptance rate is exceptionally low. About one and a half percent of the companies that apply get selected to participate for a cohort. And there had never been a nurse-led team to be selected or accepted into Y Combinator to participate. So, when we got the Yes - the phone call that we were accepted - we were completely floored.
We’re super grateful for the opportunity to be able to kind of pave the way for other nurses and nurse entrepreneurs and innovators to be seen on a bigger playing field than just within the nursing profession. But a year ago, if you had told us that we would be in Y Combinator, we’d have thought you were silly. DN: What is your perspective on the nurse-innovator movement? JM: Being a nurse isn’t just working at the bedside clinically - that’s what’s so amazing about nursing. It’s taking your experience as a nurse or what you’ve learned within nursing school and what that means in relation to patient care and such. And nurse innovators are using that knowledge in sometimes an untraditional way. Sometimes it’s problem solving and creating solutions, and its innovation and entrepreneurship. Sometimes it’s case management or working with insurance companies. What’s so amazing about nursing is that you can affect change in ways that aren’t just bedside. Don’t get me wrong, I loved working bedside. I worked in the NICU for about eight years, and with adults prior to that. I really do love it. That’s what was so hard about transitioning and working with Lumify full time. I really appreciated the team I worked with, the babies that I took care of, and the parents that I worked with, so it was really difficult to leave. I always am a big advocate for clinical work and bedside work. That’s where your ideas come from the problems that you’re experiencing at the bedside.
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DN: Maybe that’s another reason your product concept was such an immediate hit. Our nurses and health care workers are just shredded at this point, and there’s a real hunger for something positive. JM: Nurses are tired and burned out - and it’s scary for nurses to have to get to that point. While building Lumify Care and speaking with hundreds of nurses, what we have found is that the health care system in general is very siloed and disjointed. If you’re wanting to purchase scrubs, or apparel, or shoes, or your visit your professional nursing organizations, or your scheduling apps or credentialing, all of those systems have to be visited individually and accessed independently of one another. It’s inefficient, and it’s costly. About 85% of the nurses we spoke to admitted that they were overwhelmed by navigating that whole system. So, in response to that Lumify Care built the Lumify Hub, a health care marketplace where in addition to our own products, we unify the brands, resources and organizations that nurses love and need, and support them with candid reviews, transparency, and rewards and discounts. We’re partnering with some of health care’s biggest brands and creating giveaways and other fun stuff. DN: Can you tell us how the uNight Light managed to reach so many hospitals so quickly? JM: Yes, we’re at 250 different hospitals right now. We like to call it the Trojan horse method. We knew that if we targeted our niche community, the nursing community
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that we were already a part of and immersed in, that they themselves would buy the light and take it and use it within their hospital systems, and that the hospital systems would be more apt to purchase it. This validated that it was in fact something that helps nurses do their job while allowing their patients to sleep. We sold direct to consumers through health care professionals and nurses – [which led] to nurse managers and CEOs approaching us for larger quantity orders. And so that’s how we have been, that’s how we have been working to date with that with the product itself. DN: What do you think is fueling your early success? Did you have to do a lot of marketing? JM: Not as much as you would think; there was a lot of word of mouth from the first nurses that purchased our product.
We did do conferences, worked with Johnson and Johnson, and participated in the hackathons, so we did things very organically, using the platforms that we already had developed from relationships that we had prior to building Lumify Care.
“I think, ultimately, the fact that we were nurses, and understood the problem so well, [helped us] create a solution that really was able to resonate. So much of what is used at the bedside or is used clinically is there because an engineer somewhere created it.” The nursing community really aided in us being as successful as we’ve been in
Nurses model the uNIght Light.
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Nursing Innovation Special Issue 2021
the adoption of the product. I think, ultimately, the fact that we were nurses, and understood the problem so well, [helped us] create a solution that really was able to resonate. So much of what is used at the bedside or is used clinically is there because an engineer somewhere created it. It’s like a top-down mentality versus solutions made on lines for those who are using them. I think that’s why our solution was so readily adopted by the health care staff that was using them. DN: You have a new version of the light in the works, right? A sort of 1.1 or 2.0 release? How is it different? JM: Well, the original uNight Light is battery operated; the second version is rechargeable, with an option to just plug in and recharge. There’s also better directionality of the light. When nurses are
doing some particular intervention, being able to have more focus is important to us, so now, you’ll be able to direct the light in a particular area. And we added an option to use the light colors independently, so nurses can go ahead and choose the color depending on the intervention that they’re performing. DN: Nurses have been buying the light on their own, too. Schoolteachers have been known for doing this sort of thing in an ad hoc way, but are nurses expected to pay out-ofpocket for all sorts of professional necessities? JM: Yes. Nurses spend on average - if we’re talking about all the CEUs, professional nursing organizations, all their scrubs and shoes and such - roughly two grand every year. Very few hospitals provide scrubs for their nurses or their staff,
and nurses to date are pretty used to buying their own shoes, stethoscope, and so on. This is why we’ve created the Lumify Hub - to centralize these things in one location. DN: When did you start work on the Hub? JM: We had the idea loosely before going into Y Combinator. But I think that’s what we really appreciate about Y Combinator and the partners that are paired with us. They’re really challenging us and pushing us to think bigger and better, and getting us to think: how can we grow our impact? And how can we use the community that we’ve built and the relationships that we’ve built along the way to really make a difference and disrupt the system that needs change. When we started at Y Combinator, we entered in with like a seedling, and then we were able to make it grow. So we have about 35 or so brands on it right now.
DN: Is it even possible for you to continue nursing, AND be a full-time entrepreneur? JM: I was doing Lumify on my days off when I had free moments. And then when it started to get more intense and a bit busy, I worked part time. But once we were accepted into Y Combinator, one of the one of the requirements is that you become full time with the startup. And we knew that it was just going to be so busy
“A lot of [the entrepreneurial side] was just utilizing our resources and reaching out and talking to mentors, and kind of building up our foundation. But as far as having an MBA in our back pocket, neither one of us did.”
and it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. So I left my clinical job the end of May, and we began with Y Combinator around the second week of June. DN: Did you have any business background before you got involved in this? JM: I was really involved in the innovation space. I developed several different apparatuses or toolkits or different things within the clinical space to help bridge gaps or improve quality or improve safety, so I had a lot of experience with clinical innovation. And then my co-founder had previously worked on a nonprofit. A lot of it was just utilizing our resources and reaching out and talking to mentors, and kind of building up our foundation. But as far as having an MBA in our back pocket, neither one of us did.
DN: So, we need more nurse innovators, stat? JM: Nurses are great innovators, because we’re able to empathize with the problem and the end user and know how it relates to patients much more intimately than anybody else. And I think a lot of the attributes of nursing translate
“Nurses are great innovators, because we’re able to empathize with the problem and the end user and know how it relates to patients much more intimately than anybody else. And I think a lot of the attributes of nursing translate into entrepreneurship, because of the level of triage that we have to do.” into entrepreneurship, because of the level of like, triage that
Image from the new Lumify Hub site.
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we have to do. Definitely the work ethic, the organization, the triage thing stem from nursing and just diving in and getting things done. And having a growth mindset and learning as you go. I read an article not too long ago about what kind of businesses nurses can have, as entrepreneurs, and it was talking about life coaching and capabilities of advanced practice - and all of those are fantastic - but nurses are capable of creating apps and software and hardware that effect real impactful change within the clinical system. Sometimes we have to push ourselves into areas that make us maybe feel a little bit uncomfortable, but
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if you grow with it, and you go with it, you can impact the lives of so many others. That’s what makes it so exciting that we are the first nurse led team to participate in Y Combinator. It’s just a big joy and honor to be able to kind of raise the flag of nursing and kind of celebrate the profession in a way that it hasn’t been today. DN: What does Y Combi nator help you with most? JM: We’ve participated in a couple other accelerators, and have had different mentors along the way, of course, that have been fantastic. But Y Combinator definitely pushes you. And it’s a little
Nursing Innovation Special Issue 2021
bit uncomfortable. You have to figure out, okay, bigger, better, brighter. And what does that mean? What does that look like? And how can we get there? And then come up with a plan of action and run it by the partners in Y-C, and say, ‘okay, does this make sense?’ - and go back and forth about how we can execute that. But they’ve been really great at pushing us to succeed. And that’s really refreshing, because in a lot of ways, over the last year and a half, there’s been a lot of underestimating because we’re nurses, because we don’t have backgrounds in engineering or, or business degrees. And they are really proud of us and really surprised that we were
where we were, but no one really pushed us until then, because we were nurses. DN: So, what’s next for Lumify Care? JM: We enter fundraising, we’ll finish our Y-C experience, continue to grow the company, do some hiring, and grow the marketplace, and develop new products. So, the sky’s the limit, but we’re really looking forward to what the next year has to bring. Koren Thomas is the Associate Editor of DailyNurse.
HONORING THOSE WHO CARE FOR US Celebrating the Year of the Nurse Nurses have played a vital role in transforming healthcare around the world. University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC) honors these extraordinary men and women who work tirelessly so we can be healthy and well. As we join the international community in celebrating the Year of the Nurse, we offer our deepest thanks for the compassion and care nurses give their communities each and every day. We couldn’t be prouder of the many graduates of our CCNE accredited RN-to-BSN program online.
The baccalaureate degree in nursing at UMGC is accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (https://www.ccneaccreditation.org).
* This degree is only open to students with an associate’s degree in nursing or a diploma from a registered nursing education program that is recognized by the appropriate State Board of Nursing. Students must reside and have an active unencumbered nursing license in an approved state at the time of admission and throughout completion of the program. For a list of approved states, visit umgc.edu/nursing. Effective July 1, 2019, University of Maryland University College (UMUC) changed its name to University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC). UMGC is certified to operate by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV). University of Maryland Global Campus, 9625 Belvoir Road, Barden Education Center, Building 1017, Room 128, Fort Belvoir, VA 22060.
We thank nurses for all they do and are glad to serve their higher education needs.
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Merging Cyberspace and Classroom Space: Student Preferences versus Faculty Practices BY CELESTE M. Alfes, DNP, MSN, MBA, CNE, CHSE-A, FAAN
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s health care continues to change at an accelerating rate, nursing education is being forced to keep pace with the speed and content of change. Moreover, technology is advancing more rapidly than many seasoned nurse educators could have imagined. Now more than ever, it is vital for current and future nurse educators to embrace technology while incorporating it effectively into training the next generation of professional nurses prepared to care for a critically ill and aging population.
Teaching and Learning Explored Teaching nursing is both a science and an art. As a science, the scholarship of teaching is focused on disseminating evidence-based teaching-learning strategies to prepare graduates who will contribute to improving patient and health care outcomes. As an art, teaching nursing demands creativity and innovation from both
the learner and the educator. Learning is a shared responsibility—educators must make every attempt to design teaching and learning activities to reach every type of learner and create meaningful and engaging interactions where learning takes place. Learners are expected to demonstrate willingness to participate in the learning activity, be present in the moment, and cultivate an attitude of self-reflection after each learning opportunity (Ea & Alfes, 2020, p. 19).
Students’ Preference for Technology in the Classroom Today’s students are well situated to take advantage of innovative technology to enhance and fuel their academic experience. Most students today grew up in the age of the Internet, and they embrace a digital culture. They often have a high degree of media literacy and adaptability. Modern day learners are accustomed to multimedia environments and are comfortable using them for academic,
personal, and professional gain (Gaberson & Oermann, 2010). Moreover, students have come to expect that technology will be an integral part of their curriculum. (Campbell & Daley, 2009). In a 2017 survey of undergraduate nursing students at a large research-intensive university located in the northeastern United States, Nowak and Sayers assessed nursing students’ perceptions and preferences of technologyenhanced classrooms. Data were collected from 97 nursing students in a third- and fourth-year nursing program at a medium-sized suburban university. Most notable was the list of student preferences for type of technology used as part of classroom presentations was used in calculating the student’s preferred technologies (see Table 1). Nursing students’ most preferred technologies for use in the classroom setting were Games (82%); Hashtag (62%); and YouTube Videos (56%). Each of these provide the
students with the opportunity to engage in methods outside of the traditional lecture and PowerPoint delivery methods. Further, the most popular technologies utilize the student’s smart phone, tablet, or social media platform. Unfortunately, many of the technologies that topped students’ favorites list are ones not commonly utilized nor readily adopted by experienced faculty. Nurse educators have long defaulted to lecturing and power point as strategies for efficiently presenting large amounts of course content. However, when the educator utilizes lecture and power point, they are assigning students to the relatively passive role of listening versus engagement. Therefore, it is not surprising that many nursing students are unable to apply information from lecture in a meaningful way (Waldeck & Weimer, 2017). The student is always the enduser, regardless of the mode of education.
TECHNOLOGY TYPE
STUDENTS’ PREFERENCE (N = 97)
YouTube video
56%
Prezi
39%
Tablet
25%
MP3 player
24%
Virtual reality
38%
Holograms
37%
16%
Blog
4%
Hashtag
62%
Games
82%
Table 1: Students’ Preference for Technology Use in the Classroom (Adapted from Nowak, 2020, in Ea & Alfes)The student is always the end-user, regardless of the mode of education.
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Next Steps for Nursing Faculty: Contemporary nurse educators now have access to more efficient pedagogical methods to engage and train nursing students through the use of varied digital technologies. With the right supporting infrastructure, adapting commonly available technologies, educators have the ability to create highly effective nursing curricula customized to engage students while meeting their individual needs. These technologies are often freely available, familiar to most students, easy to use, and adaptable (Nowak, 2020, p. 134). According to Nowak (2020), incorporating various technologies within the classroom wetting enables the nurse educator to engage learners in a digital platform that is familiar, interactive, effective, and scalable to any
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setting. The challenge, oftentimes, is incentivizing faculty to adopt these technologies due to the steep learning curve of non-digital native faculty who are more comfortable with lecture and power point. The majority of students and increasing numbers of faculty in all health care fields are finding mobile devices indispensable when performing information and data searches, answering clinical questions, and making clinical decisions. Examples of technologies being used to enhance classroom learning include artificial intelligence, virtual reality, gaming, webcasting, digital storytelling, and virtual standardized patient interactions. Further, online discussion boards, virtual webinars, and high-fidelity simulations as part of highstakes testing are all effective methods to engage younger
Nursing Innovation Special Issue 2021
generations of students while creating a realistic virtual learning environment (Gaberson & Oermann, 2010).
Innovation Breeds Further Innovation Globally, there has been a call for a paradigm shift, from a teacher to a learner centered approach in nursing education. Educators must be fully trained, supported, and incentivized to use new technologies (Rajesh, 2017). Cutting-edge technology has become an expected learning platform of 21st century learners. With the application of current technologies, nurse educators can “shed traditional lectures in favor of developing a dynamic, student-friendly, and interactive learning experience.” (Oermann, 2015). Collectively nurse educators have much to do to change the pedagogy and the practicalities
of educating the next generation of professional nurses. Innovative teaching strategies will challenge the discipline and spark additional innovations. Faculty need to embrace and systematically integrate these innovations into best practices for nursing education. “We want to ensure that we are preparing a stellar workforce for the decades ahead. Our society demands and deserves no less,” (Fitzpatrick, 2020, p. 15). Celeste M. Alfes, DNP, MSN, MBA, CNE, CHSE-A, FAAN, is Professor & Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs and Director of the Center for Nursing Education, Simulation, and Innovation at the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, Case Western Reserve University.
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OSU‘s Tim Raderstorf: Planting the Seeds to Grow a Culture of Health Care Innovation BY KOREN Thomas
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Nursing Innovation Special Issue 2021
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ounded in 2017, The Ohio State University Innovation Studio is run by the OSU College of Nursing and Center for Health Care Innovation and Wellness. In normal times, the Innovation Studio travels the country, encouraging students to create health care solutions, and helping them to use technology to develop their ideas into marketable new products. How did the pandemic affect the innovation program? DailyNurse spoke to Tim Raderstorf, MSN, RN, the co-founder of the Innovation Studio and Chief Innovation Officer (as well as Clinical Instructor of Practice) at the OSU School of Nursing. Dr. Raderstorf has conducted neurosurgical research on Tethered
Spinal Cord Syndrome, but his passion is health care innovation. When he isn’t teaching, Raderstorf travels the country with OSU’s mobile Innovation Studio. He is also an expert on
“At the December pitch day, one of the nurses on the unit came by on her 15-minute break to pitch her idea to us. And she was wearing PPE, that— unknown to her—we had printed.” the role of innovation in nurse leadership and an award-winning textbook author. EvidenceBased Leadership, Innovation,
and Entrepreneurship in Nursing and Health care, the textbook Raderstorf co-wrote with OSU School of Nursing Dean Bernadette Melnyk was an American Journal of Nursing (AJN) Book of the Year for 2020, winning first place honors in its category. When the first wave of the pandemic hit, the Studio was of course locked down. Raderstorf shut down the traveling innovation studio and moved all operations to the permanent location on the OSU central campus. Being innovators, though, they quickly adapted. Raderstorf says, “For the first six months of COVID, because we didn’t open our doors until the students came on campus in September (2020), we
ran a virtual makerspace.” With support from the OSU College of Engineering and public-private partnerships, Innovation Studio shop manager Josh Wooten created a sort of computer-run PPE factory. During the lockdowns of the initial spring 2020 COVID-19 surge, Raderstorf notes that “We wanted to keep Josh as safe as we possibly could, so we set up a makerspace in his house. He had five 3D printers and was printing PPE around the clock with mostly faceshield frames, so that we could hook transparencies or plastic to them. It’d be running day and night, doing work for us while we slept.” The Studio also reached out to students before OSU reopened that fall. In May
The OSU Innovation Studio team. At center, Tim Raderstorf, MSN, RN.
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2020, Tim’s team launched a COVID Campus Safety challenge, encouraging students to submit their ideas. After the students returned for classes, a second virtual challenge encouraged them to suggest practical ideas that would promote safety on campus. At that time (September 2020), public health initiatives were not yet regarded as suspect moves designed to advance a sinister authoritarian plot, so the initiative inspired a variety of submissions aimed at improving mask adherence, social distancing, and mental health of the student population. Raderstorf recalls that they held student pitch days in October and December, and that, “At the December pitch day, one of the nurses on the unit came by on her 15-minute break to pitch her idea to us. And she was wearing PPE, that—unknown to
“Clinicians Have Never Been More Engaged” her—we had printed” on those 3D printers in Josh Wooten’s makerspace bubble. Raderstorf believes that “The acclaim and attention and interest has prompted more nurses to raise their voices in terms of public health and policy,” and has encouraged more of them “to innovate and come up with solutions for the various pain points that they’ve encountered during the pandemic. And I think that’s going to build. I’m very bullish on that. I’m big on systems of innovation and building a structure of innovation, to have a proper culture of innovation that thrives.”
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Our health care system still needs to implement a structure or establish a culture that encourages nurses, physicians, and other frontline health workers to bring their ideas for innovation to their organizations. Tim posits, “I do think clinicians have never been more willing and engaged in changing the system. The question is, can systems become engaged and willing and set their clinicians up for success so that they can appropriately drive the changes that need to occur? Particularly as we become cash strapped and health care is going through a massive transformation. There’s going to be a very challenging component to the future of health care once the pandemic is over. We have to decide what we refuse to go back to and what we will continue to make changes on.” Since the outbreak of the pandemic, Raderstorf reflects, “I do think that the exceptional [nursing] leadership that’s occurring throughout health systems now needs to be the norm. Those things about celebrating our wins, focusing on what’s important today.
“There’s going to be a very challenging component to the future of healthcare once the pandemic is over. We have to decide what we refuse to go back to and what we will continue to make changes on.”
‘What’s important now’ — you know, that’s an acronym for
Nursing Innovation Special Issue 2021
‘win’. How do we win today? What are we going to focus on?
More Nurses are Tossing their Stethoscopes into the Pitching Ring Campus pitch events were a growing phenomenon across US schools even before Covid. At the OSU Innovation Studio, Raderstorf says that over 1,000 people made pitches between 2018 and December 2020. About 60% of the pitches are presented by students, but the remaining 40% tend to come from faculty or other staff, which he describes as “A nice healthy mix. We are seeing an increase in faculty and staff, but the students are increasing at a much faster rate.” But Raderstorf is not wild about buzz-phrases like “Nurse Innovators.” In fact, he says, “You know, one of my least favorite terms is ‘nursing innovation’. Because there’s no such thing as physician innovation, there’s no such thing as dentist innovation, there’s no such thing as pharmacist innovation. So why do we label ourselves other than just being innovators and really showcasing that we are indeed equals with our peers?” One aspect of maker- innovator culture that should come naturally to nurses is the necessity to work with a multidisciplinary team – and to be a success, an innovation must have feedback from the people who will be using it. As Raderstorf puts it, “If you don’t have an interprofessional team, that disqualifies you from being eligible for funding. So, if two physicians come up with a great idea, we say, ‘awesome, who are you going to use this on’? And they usually say, ‘well, it’d be an operating room or height’.
‘Well, who preps your trays? That person needs to be on your team! You need to be getting insights from the people who are going to be interacting with this tool.’”
Innovation and Entrepreneurship While he notes that “A lot of people are interested in developing a new business, a new tool, something along those lines,” Raderstorf says that he also sees “a lot of people interested in policy change and awareness campaigns.” However, he observed that a nurse-led innovation that combined these strands was the Studio’s “most successful commercial effort.” An OSU nurse wanted to find a way to prevent hospitalized addicts from injecting drugs into their system through their IVs and make such “offlabel” use of an IV impossible or at least extremely difficult. So, Raderstorf continues, this nurse sought a way “to stop people from being able to access the lines without us knowing about it and created a tape that would go over IV ports…. And, you know, it’s now on the market. Her idea has gone from something she drew on a napkin to a tool that is now being used worldwide to help patients.” The entrepreneurial aspect helps spur change because, as Tim remarks, “there’s nothing that’s free in our health system. That makes it really challenging to scale your ideas without going the commercialization route. If you can’t sell it, it’s really hard to have that mass impact. But really, the key goal of the Innovation Studio is to build a culture of innovation. That’s a long game, you have
to be patient, and you have to be willing to continue to water
Building a culture of innovation is “A long game, you have to be patient, and you have to be willing to continue to water the seeds until they’re able to sprout.”
the seeds until they’re able to sprout.”
Building a “Culture of Ambition” Congratulating Raderstorf
on the AJN recognition for his and Bernadette Melnyk’s textbook, we shared the judge’s comment that “What I loved about this book is that the authors made complex leadership and business topics accessible and interesting by sharing leaders’ personal stories…” He was delighted. “I have never heard anyone say ‘I love a textbook’ before. One thing that I think is missing from academia is storytelling.” As an educator, Raderstorf teaches in the OSU Master of Health care Innovation program, which “is fully founded on innovation leadership, which adopts what we like to refer to as the
entrepreneurial mindset. One new favorite term that I have is building a culture of ambition. And I mean ambition in a way that you’re striving for excellence. So, what we teach our team—and what’s in the book—is teaching people to find out what stories resonate most effectively with their coworkers and teammates in the population they engage in, and have that be the driving force that your team unifies around to make significant and substantial change. So by building this culture of ambition, you’re taking on ownership for your actions, you’re taking on ownership for the things that
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surround you, and the system that you work in.” The key, he stresses, is to “focus on what’s important, to develop a ‘yes, and’ culture, that empowers people to bring their ideas forward, incentivizes them, provides them the permission to be innovative, and validates them when they engage in those behaviors. And you build a structure of innovation that lasts beyond your tenure within the organization.” Koren Thomas is the Associate Editor of DailyNurse
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