Nurses are on the front lines solving problems in health care and the University of Iowa Office of Innovation is stepping up to support their ideas.
The Office of Innovation provides support to faculty and staff who invent approaches, processes and technologies to solve pressing problems. Its Iowa Nurse Innovators program supports nurses to create solutions that improve patient safety, workflow efficiencies and effectiveness in hospitals across the state, according to its website.
This week, the Office of Innovation is holding the Nurse Innovators Road Show, which aims to bring nurses’ innovations to communities across Iowa, featuring keynotes, interactive workshops and a live pitch competition.
“Nurses, traditionally, are, what I like to say, committing workarounds, modifying whatever materials are in front of them to meet the need of the patient or themselves,” said Allison Hurt, associate director of the Iowa Nurse Innovators Program.
One example is nurses taking a tongue depressor and taping that to the side rail of a bed so they can hang cords over it, “instead of having cords and tubing, just dangling on the ground,” Hurt said.
“The idea of this program is a nurse that is currently using a tongue depressor and tape can actually develop a new medical device to solve that challenge, and whether they want to solve it locally, just on their unit, just in their hospital, or take it as far as they can to the world of health care, we have the resources, really, to get them from that idea all the way out to market through the Office of Innovation,” Hurt said.
The roadshow features two events this week, one held Wednesday in Cherokee and another happening today in Iowa City. Digital health care executive Judy Lenane is the keynote speaker for both events.
The Iowa Nurse Innovators Program was funded through a Kauffman Foundation grant and matching state funding, for a total of about $810,000, Hurt said. The grant was from 2022 through summer 2025, so the program is state-funded at this point, she said.
Among the innovations the program is celebrating is the Droste Drape, created by Jill Droste, an operating room nurse at University of Iowa Health Care, Hurt said.
“She was really sick of scrubbing the base of the OR beds, and every surface in the OR is covered during a surgery, except for the base of the beds,” Hurt said. “And she identified pretty early on that she was sick of that. And why are we not covering this surface? And this is where all of the mechanicals of the bed live. …. She has designed a cover for the base of the OR beds that is disposable. And she’s gotten amazing feedback from her co-workers.”
The Thursday event in Iowa City features a pitch competition, with eight total pitches.
They range from tubing, cord management and neonatal resuscitation to one nurse focused on how to help patients get to the bathroom without falling.
The pitch competition awards are: First place, $10,000, second place, $5,000 and third place, $2,000.
Hurt said judges are not just examining industry possibilities of new ideas. They are looking at “from the nursing perspective, do these projects feel viable?”
Nurses have never before “been given the agency to make the change that they are making,” Hurt said. “It’s always been that nurses are just kind of meeting the need and figuring out what the patient needs, and what can I do, and what’s in front of me to meet that need.”