The Department of Professional Practice recently held its first Design Thinking & Innovation boot camp, led by Marion Leary, RN, MSN, MPH, FAHA, director of Innovation at Penn Nursing. Sixteen staff members joined the four-hour session to brainstorm ideas for tackling challenges in health care.
“This type of work typically isn’t taught in nursing school, but nurses are innovating constantly,” said Annelies Pfeiffer, MSN, RNC-WHNP-BC, a nurse practice adviser and nurse practitioner in Women’s Health, who coordinated the workshop. “Every single day we are creatively finding solutions to obstacles in our clinical care.”
The workshop addressed reoccurring themes from patient and staff experience surveys: cell phone infection prevention, patient fall risks, managing materials, and caring for patients in small spaces. The members were split into four groups to address each issue, later reconvening to present the following prototypes and potential plans:
Cell Phone Infection Prevention
Group 1 designed a cardboard prototype of a small UV box that would support disinfection before each patient contact. The group’s design is very easy to use and fits into most health care team members’ daily work flow.
Patient Fall Risks
Group 2 developed a tool that could integrate with electronic health records and identify risk factors for falling. Rather than manually assessing a patient with a fall risk assessment scale, a patient can be assessed automatically. A computer program can search through a patient’s medical history and find key words that would indicate a fall risk.
Managing Materials
Group 3 evaluated better processes for on-demand materials, such as gloves and bandages. They conceptualized ways to use technology to better communicate with Materials Management, creating an alert system to notify the department about any needed products and having those products delivered in a timely manner.
Caring for Patients in Small Spaces
Group 4 suggested smaller trash cans in patient rooms, rather than the current, large trash cans, to save space. Instead of the trash cans being emptied once a day at a specific hour, when there may only be little to no trash at the time of pick-up, they recommended having an alert when a trash can is in need of being emptied.
“The workshop was a great way to network with people at PAH that I would otherwise likely be unable to meet,” said participant Dominic Gatta, SICU Lead Nurse Practitioner. "It was a very interactive, hands-on course that taught us how ideas start and how they can be effectively brought to practice.”
“This was a wonderful opportunity, and I loved the way of thinking [Leary] encouraged,” said Anna Lee Sigueza, DNP, RN, NE-BC, CPAN, nurse manager of Perianesthesia.
Due to the popularity of the course (the registration was filled in two days) and positive feedback from participants, Pfeiffer hopes to collaborate with Penn Nursing in the future to host a second workshop.
“It’s the nature of our work to be innovating, although many nurses may not realize that what they’re doing is innovative. They just see it as part of the job,” said Pfeiffer. “We’re looking forward to creating more courses to raise awareness that efforts like these are impactful for patient care.”