An examination of nurse-authored patents: Implications for nursing practice

Making hospitals innovative: Macro-level policy to sustain micro-innovations in healthcare

Successful innovation clusters are notoriously difficult to establish, and many attempts fail. How can we go about designing such systems reliably? We describe how ecosystems can be strengthened through grassroots bottom-up efforts that empower user and community innovation, as opposed to economic policies that dictate innovation. Specifically focusing on the healthcare industry, we advocate that community hospitals which constitute 90% of all hospitals in Canada are the ideal setting for such community innovation efforts. We investigated the distribution of innovation output from hospitals over the past 13 years and found a decrease in predominance of major teaching hospitals, supporting the potential role for community hospitals in this space. We categorize different types of innovations and recommend institutional policies that can sustain bottom-up, micro-level efforts. Such policies could improve and enhance the development of micro-innovations and the creation of health innovation clusters.

Ten steps to transform ideas into product innovations: An interdisciplinary collaboration between nursing and engineering

AIMS

To describe the development process of a device from the conception of the idea to the first contact with the commercial environment, and to demonstrate its practical application through an interdisciplinary collaboration between nursing and engineering for the design of a protective device for peripheral venous catheters.

BACKGROUND

Nurses are key agents for identifying unresolved needs or problems related to nursing care. To address these needs, creative ideation processes are often triggered among nurses to seek technological answers to these challenges.

RESULTS

The ten steps to develop a device are presented: (1) detecting an unsatisfied clinical need; (2) searching for preexisting marketed products; (3) searching for patents; (4) maintaining confidentiality throughout the process; (5) obtaining institutional support; (6) forming a multidisciplinary team; (7) developing the idea; (8) applying for a patent; (9) building the prototype; (10) marketing the device. This methodology was applied to design a protective device for peripheral venous catheters in hospitalized patients.

CONCLUSIONS

Nurses can play a key role in the promotion of healthcare innovation in their field to improve procedures, thanks to their direct contact with patients, and by providing their insight on devices that can enhance patient care. The successful interdisciplinary collaboration between nurses and engineers can provide a response to relevant clinical problems such as the manipulation or removal of peripheral venous catheters.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING AND/OR HEALTH POLICY

A hospital policy is required to encourage the participation of nurses in innovative actions. Furthermore, it is important to support nurse leaders who can play a pivotal role in incorporating creativity into work environments and empowering other nurses to innovatively address clinical issues.

NO PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION

This article describes the process for developing a health device.

Challenges experienced by pediatric nurses in the process of developing innovative products: A qualitative study

OBJECTIVE

As essential healthcare providers, nurses are key to contributing innovations to improve the quality of care. This study aimed to explore the challenges pediatric nurses face in developing and patenting innovative products.

METHOD

A qualitative descriptive design has been used in this study. The study sample consists of pediatric nurses who had developed innovative products and successfully obtained product registrations. Purposive sampling was used to select 17 pediatric nurses who met the inclusion criteria. Data were collected through semi-structured, individual, in-depth interviews.

RESULTS

Two main themes and two related subthemes were identified. The first main theme is 'product development and management challenges.' The subthemes of this theme are 'unknown ecosystem' and 'burnout.' The second theme is 'protecting ideas and innovation.' The subthemes of this theme are 'fear of idea theft' and 'dead patents.'

CONCLUSION

Nurses face challenges, such as taking part in an unfamiliar innovation ecosystem, burnout due to long processes, and fear of idea theft. At the same time, commercialization of these innovations and market demand emerge as additional challenges.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Identifying the challenges experienced by pediatric nurses during the innovation process can help to develop strategies to overcome difficulties, create an innovation culture, and increase the quality of pediatric patient care.

Nurses’ confidence in starting a new venture, startup or project in the context of nurse-led hackathons: Results of prehackathon survey

Background

A hackathon framework has been successfully applied to solving health care challenges, including COVID-19, without much documented evidence of nurses' baseline or acquired confidence.

Purpose

To understand differences in baseline confidence levels in starting a new venture, startup or project in the context of nurse-led hackathons.

Method

A retrospective secondary analysis of a presurvey of hackathon participants from two NurseHack4Health (NH4H) events held in 2021.

Discussion

Male nurses and international nurses were more confident than the U.S.-based nurses. When comparing the 75% of participants who had not attended a hackathon previously to the 25% of participants who had, there was an increased confidence level among non-nurses and among participants with the previous hackathon, datathon, and ideation experience.

Conclusion

If hackathons can help nurses identify strengths, add new expertise and boost confidence, it may empower nurses to pursue their ideas more effectively, aid professional growth, and provide affirmation of innovator self-identity.

The Nurse+Engineer as the Prototype V-Shaped Professional

BACKGROUND

Descriptions of convergence research include promises to solve complex societal problems, such as environmental determinants of health and social determinants of health, through the integration of diverse disciplines, such as nursing and engineering, to create novel frameworks, such as the V-shaped professional.

PURPOSE

The purpose of this paper was to define the nurse+engineer as a prototypical V-shaped professional.

METHODS

Starting from a description of the I-shaped discipline of nursing and the I-shaped discipline of engineering, we follow an intentional pathway to define the concept of the nurse+engineer as a new V-shaped professional.

FINDINGS

Examples of the nurse+engineer at the bedside and the nurse+engineer in the community are highlighted to support a theoretical definition of the V-shaped nurse+engineer.

DISCUSSION

Implications of the nurse+engineer in the workforce and practical recommendations for training nurse+engineer professionals are provided to improve healthcare policy, practice, research, and education through scientific discovery and innovation.

Kirkpatrick's evaluation of the effect of a nursing innovation team training for clinical nurses

AIM

This study aims to design a 100-h training programme for nursing innovation teams and to evaluate the effect of this training programme using Kirkpatrick's model.

BACKGROUND

The innovative capability of nurses is a powerful driver for the development of the nursing discipline, and it is currently at a low to medium level in China. Innovation competency development has become a research trend in nurses' in-service education, but only changes in nursing innovation behaviours before and after training have been evaluated. The cascading, continuous assessment tools are rarely used.

METHODS

This is a quasi-experimental research design: pretest and posttest design. Totally, 61 clinical nurses from Hangzhou Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine were enrolled for innovation training. This innovation team training programme consisted of a 36-h theoretical training phase and a 64-h collaborative training phase. The four levels of Kirkpatrick's model, that is, reaction, learning, behaviour, and result, were applied for the evaluation together with questionnaires.

RESULTS

At reaction level, the nurses' attendance was over 85% in two phases. The differences between nurse organizational innovation climate scores of tested nurses before and after training were statistically significant (t = -22.559, P < .001). At learning level, there were statistically significant differences between nurses' innovation self-efficacy scale scores of tested nurses before and after training (t = -16.832, P < .001). At behaviour level, the nursing innovation behaviour scale scores of tested nurses were significantly higher after training (t = -18.950, P < .001) than before the training. At result level, the clinical nurse innovation ability of tested nurses after the training were higher than before the training (t = -26.275, P < .001). The numbers of patent applications, granted patents, application for scientific research projects, sponsored scientific research projects, and papers published by team members after the training were larger than those before training (Z = -2.032, P = .042).

CONCLUSION

Kirkpatrick's model can evaluate the effectiveness of nursing innovation training for clinical nurses. The nursing innovation training is beneficial to improve nurses' innovation capacity, organizational innovation climate and innovation self-efficacy, and nursing innovation behaviour and promote the output of research and innovation projects.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT

Managers can flexibly develop training modules with regional characteristics based on this programme to effectively improve the innovation ability of clinical nurses, thus meeting the urgent demand for innovative nursing talents and the rapid development of nursing disciplines.