Nurses are increasingly front and center in healthcare innovation efforts, from the classroom to the bedside to the executive suite.
Consider these examples from recent FierceHealthcare coverage:
- The University of Minnesota encourages nurses to take a bigger role in innovation and recently created a yearly workshop designed to arm nurses with entrepreneurial skills.
- A Massachusetts General Hospital program awards grants to nurses and other staffers who want to improve operations.
- Geisinger Health System adopted a nursing bundle that generated a more consistent patient experience across the system and raised overall patient satisfaction scores.
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Now, a trio of healthcare leaders with nursing backgrounds take a deep dive into the workings of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses’ 16-month, hospital-based nurse leadership and innovation training program, the Clinical Scene Investigator (CSI) Academy.
“Key to harnessing the power of this formidable group is delivering educational content that improves leadership and influence skills, instilling confidence in nurses to lead change,” Caryl Goodyear-Bruch, Ph.D., senior director for patient care services at Children’s Mercy Kansas City, Mercy’s COO Karen Cox, Ph.D., and Marian Altman, a clinical practice specialist with AACN, write in a Health Affairs post.
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The curriculum includes change management, creativity and innovation, project development, improvement science and sustainability.
The program’s goal is to improve both clinical and financial results, and the post outlines some of the ways nurses have achieved them. Together, for example, 67 teams of nurses in the program saved their organizations about $34 million, collectively. And they reduced hospital-acquired conditions, falls and pressure injuries by about 50%, according to the post.