Nurses: Your Ideas Matter
By: American Nurses Association
It’s Time to Put Your Innovations Out There!
Do you consider yourself an innovator? Nurses constantly create better ways to improve processes and patient care, but most don’t see themselves as innovators.
It’s time to change that!
Did you know?
- A nurse invented the crash cart.
- Florence Nightingale invented the first call system, using bells instead of lights. She began the first physician-nurse rounding, modern sanitation practices, and food delivery systems within a hospital, too.
- A nurse in England discovered that babies placed closer to windows had less jaundice.
- A nurse practitioner from Barbados helped get Nelson Mandela out of jail (which ushered in the end of apartheid).
- After seeing a nurse treating famine victims in Ethiopia, Bob Geldof created Band Aid, which inspired Live Aid in the U.S., which saved more than two million lives in Africa.
These examples and more are part of Olivia Lemberger’s blog, Reflections on Nursing Leadership. The clinical nurse educator at Rush Copley Hospital in Aurora, IL, wants to help nurses embrace their legacy as innovators. “If you have ever thought of a better way to do something or realized that a current process needs improvement, you are an innovator,” she writes.
Here’s another way to share those innovations with the world. The American Nurses Association and BD™, a global medical technology company, have teamed up for the 2nd Annual ANA Innovation Awards. Nominate your favorite nurse innovators – both individual and nurse-led teams – and they could win up to $50,000 to develop, produce, test, and implement their product, program, project, or practice. Award winners have one year to refine their innovation and then present at an ANA event.
The ANA Innovation Awards are a great way to recognize and celebrate nurse innovation and your own nursing staff. So, what are you waiting for? Let’s bring nurse innovation out of the shadows and put those great ideas front and center for all to see. The deadline for nominations is 1/15/2020. Submit yours today!
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