All Hail Nurse-Inventors, Making Gadgets for Health

Call her “MacGyver Nurse”. Using adult-sized bandages, sponges, and tape, Roxanna Reyna, RNC-NIC, has developed a unique skin and wound dressing for infants with abdominal wall birth defects.

Reyna is just one of many resourceful nurses across the country improving existing tools and devices, or inventing new ones, in order to solve problems that they see at the bedside. In the process, these nurses are making health care more affordable and more effective. They see opportunity—not in things that work, but in things that don’t work. When they encounter a problem, they figure out how to solve it, using materials they have on hand.

Reyna, who works at Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas, was one of several inventors recognized by the White House at its first-ever Maker Faire held on June 18. The event put a spotlight on an emerging “maker movement," a tech-influenced do-it-yourself community of inventors. At the Maker Faire, President Obama announced a series of steps to increase access to tools and techniques that will enable Americans to turn their ideas into reality—and spur manufacturing, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the process.

It makes sense that nurses are recognizing themselves as makers, and joining the maker movement. When I was a practicing physician I saw nurses solving problems on the front lines of health care every day. Considerably closer to the patient than the usual engineering lab, they are uniquely positioned to design solutions aimed at improving care and the patient experience. Yet these innovations rarely spread beyond the units in which they work; too often, they remain a sketch on the back of a napkin.

To support nurse-inventors, the Little Devices Lab @ MIT, with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) started the MakerNurse initiative, which seeks to identify tools and resources that could help boost nurses’ ability to bring their ideas to life, and then take them to the forefront of health care innovation.

At the White House Maker Faire, MakerNurse and RWJF announced the launch of an online community aimed at searching out and accelerating the ingenuity of nurses across the US. In September, it will release tools and resources to empower nurses to make and innovate at the patient bedside. And over the past nine months MakerNurse has been collecting stories from nurses across the country about what they are creating, every day, to improve patient care, in order to identify ways to nurture the ingenuity of nurses and help bring their solutions to patients.

Here are just a few of the dozens of notable nurse-made inventions:

• Mary Beth Dwyer, RN, taped a cotton ball or Velcro over the nurse call button so blind patients can feel it. She also cut holes in hospital socks to create gloves that keep IVs in line with the body.
• Victor Ty, RN, a pediatric oncology nurse, drew on his previous career in textile design and his passion for Legos to create Lego models that help hearing-impaired, deaf, and non-verbal cancer patients better understand radiation treatment.
• Elizabeth McGoogan, RN, PPN, designed an adaptable pacifier with a port on top and a deflection shield so that aerosol medication delivered through nebulizers could be directed to a baby or toddler’s mouth, thereby increasing the level of oxygen delivered.

At RWJF we are building a Culture of Health, one in which each person has the opportunity to lead a healthy life and make the healthy choice. The maker movement has the potential to empower all kinds of people to devise healthy solutions -- not just nurses, but caregivers, patients, and family members, all creating and sharing devices and ideas.. Think of it as a Silicon Valley for health inventions, sprouting in every clinic.

If you know of any nurses, doctors, or patients that have creative solutions for health problems, please share in the comments. And tune in Aug. 1 from 12:15 p.m. – 1 p.m. ET to our First Friday Google + Hangout at which panelists will discuss the transformative potential of nursing. You can RSVP and watch the live broadcast directly on this page. We’re taking questions from viewers on Twitter @RWJF and on the event page. Just tag your question with #RWJF1stFri and we’ll do our best to answer them during the hour.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD, MBA is President and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation's largest foundation devoted to health.