Nursing Innovation: A CNS Shares Her Path to Inventions (Podcast)

Jane Hartman, MSN, APRN, PNP-BC, a clinical nurse specialist at Cleveland Clinic, is an advocate for innovation. She encourages nurses to pursue ideas that improve practice – and to take ownership of them.

“For many, many years nurses have just offered our knowledge and information to medical device companies and said, ‘Oh, this could be better.’ Then they go and create it or change it, when it’s actually our idea,” she says. “So, intellectual property, for me, is very important.”

In this episode of Cleveland Clinic’s Nurse Essentials podcast, Hartman shares her thoughts on nursing innovation and provides details on her most notable invention, the High-Line™ product for managing IV lines. She discusses:

• Why nurses are the ideal innovators
• Her previous innovations, including the Pediatric Peripheral Vascular Access Algorithm
• Development of the High-Line, from the initial inspiration through design, prototyping and roll-out at Cleveland Clinic
• The importance of nurse feedback and research studies to validate innovations

Click the podcast player above to listen to the episode now, or read on for a short, edited excerpt. Check out more Nurse Essentials episodes at my.clevelandclinic.org/podcasts/nurse-essentials or wherever you get your podcasts.

Podcast excerpt

Podcast host Carol Pehotsky, DNP, RN, NEA-BC: We have listeners who are nursing students, mid-career and career who aren't at Cleveland Clinic, and they don't have an innovations department. What advice would you give them?

Hartman: The first advice I would give you I got from Tim Brown, chair of IDEO, which is a design company in England. He actually spoke at the Cleveland Clinic, and he was fantastic! One of the things that he said was, "Don't try to sell something until you have a small prototype because it might not work." And I thought, "That is great advice." I [wish] I had done that at the very beginning – had a working prototype. I just didn't know.

You learn as the process goes on, and I learned that I did need a working prototype that had a CAD drawing, that people can understand. And so with that small prototype [of the High-Line] that my son made, I showed the nurses. And they were like, "That's a great idea." And that's what kept me going. … No one said, “That's the stupidest idea.” No nurse said that. Now, I heard that from many other people. But nurses, none of them said it was a stupid idea. So, they really helped me move forward.

Pehotsky: So, it helps have an innovation department. But even if your place doesn't have one, keep writing down those ideas and asking those questions and asking your colleagues and getting that feedback. And persistence.

Hartman: Yeah. Oh, you have to be persistent. You can't take no for an answer!