Education and Incubation of Nurse-led Innovation with Hiyam Nadel & Marion Leary: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix
Education and Incubation of Nurse-led Innovation with Hiyam Nadel & Marion Leary: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Saul Marquez:
Hey Outcomes Rocket Nation, Saul Marquez here. Have you heard of SONSIEL? That’s the Society of Nurse Scientists, Innovators, Entrepreneurs and Leaders. We’ve teamed up with them to put together a podcast series for nurses. In this 12-part series, we’ll magnify and elevate nurse innovators’ expertise as transformation agents who contribute to health care reform and improved outcomes. Through interviews with these amazing nurse leaders and innovators, we’ll help you connect the dots in a world where nurses are significant leaders recognized for transforming health care and society. Visit outcomesrocket.health/sonsiel to learn more. That’s outcomesrocket.health/sonsiel S O N S I E L to learn more.
Saul Marquez:
Welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket everybody, Saul Marquez here, and today I have the privilege of hosting two outstanding nurse leaders as part of the SONSIEL Nurse Leadership Initiative. We’re hosting this 12-part series of incredible nurses in health care, and we’re publishing it all here in the month of May. So I hope you’ve enjoyed it thus far. Today I’m privileged to welcome two amazing guests. First, I’d like to introduce Hiyam Nadel. She is the Director of the Center for Innovations and Care Delivery at Massachusetts General Hospital. In this role, she’s both a mentor and incubator of ideas for frontline caregivers conceiving an idea to prototyping and beyond. She’s currently an inaugural Johnson and Johnson Innovation Fellow. Prior to accepting this position, Hiyam played an essential role in reopening the obstetrics department after a four-year hiatus. Along with the reopening of the obstetrics division came the opportunity to implement a different nurse care model and a medical home for obstetrics. In addition, she’s been instrumental in designing I.T. programs such as the Ambulatory Patient Tracking System and co-authored the design of the OB, EMR and electronic medical records subsequently sold to help with Packard. And we also have on the podcast today Marion Leary. She is the Director of Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing. As a director of Innovation at Penn Nursing, she works to amplify and educate nurses as leaders in health and health care innovation. Mcs. Leary is a member of the American Nurses Association Innovation Advisory Committee and a founding member of the Society of Nurse Scientists, Innovators, Entrepreneurs, And Leaders. That’s SONSIEL in short. She’s a host of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing Podcasts, Amplify Nursing, and a contributor to the American Nurses Association official Journal, The American Nurse. And so I am excited to have both of you on the podcast, just the warm welcome. Why don’t we start with fill in any blanks in the intro that I may have missed that you feel the listeners need to know about you?
Hiyam Nadal:
Thank you, Saul. I will also say I’m also a founding member of SONSIEL.
Saul Marquez:
Very good. Thank you for that. Yes, Hiyam is also a founding member. Hiyam, thank you. And sorry I missed that point.
Hiyam Nadal:
Oh no, no problem. And I met Marion at the first Inaugural Northeastern University Nurse Hackathon where she was actually the winner.
Marion Leary:
That event transformed my professional life in so many different ways, the most important of which is becoming friends and colleagues with Hiyam.
Saul Marquez:
I love that. You know, it’s amazing that if you walk into the right room or virtual room and you give it your all, it’s amazing what could happen. And it sounds like for you, Marion, that hackathon really transformed what you do.
Marion Leary:
Yeah, it really did in so many levels. And not just for me. We see this all the time at our SONSIEL hackathon, both in-person and virtual. As soon as nurses show up to that space, feel that energy and start to get engaged and involved with everybody else in the room, they immediately say to us, they found their people, they found their community, and they’re going to take that energy back to wherever it is that they practice to be able to harness that energy and start to create innovative solutions in a way that they had not been able to do in the past. So these events are so transformative and it really speaks to the need of educating nurses and nursing students around these different innovative methodologies and then being able to implement them back into the places where they’re practicing.
Saul Marquez:
So well, said Marianne. And so let’s kick this off by both of you telling us a little bit about what inspires your work in health care.
Hiyam Nadal:
Well, for me, Saul I think I know it sounds a little bit cliche, but I love taking care of patients at their most vulnerable state and being able to be their advocate as well as their voice when they’re unable to support. That really energizes me and just passionate about seeing them to wellness for the most part.
Saul Marquez:
I love that Hiyam. And how about you, Marian?
Marion Leary:
Yeah, I am lucky in that I get to teach both undergrad and graduate students at Penn Nursing around the foundations of innovation and design thinking. And so I am inspired continually every class by the students that I teach. I learn from them, I’m inspired by them, and it really gets me excited and shows me that what we are doing in this space is really important and it’s really needed and our nurses and nursing students are really craving it. And so every week that I teach these students, I leave the class just more inspired than I was before.
Saul Marquez:
That’s awesome. That’s a sign from both of you that what you’re doing is making a difference. You’re leaving inspired from the work that you do. Not to say that it’s not tiring because it is, but you’re doing things that are moving the ball forward on care, and so the thing that I love about having both of you on today is that we’re actually touching on education, on the one hand with Marion and then the provider space with Hiyam So talk to us about your organization. How are you guys adding value to the health care ecosystem in what you do today?
Marion Leary:
At Penn Nursing we really have been systematically thinking about how to integrate innovation into the curriculum and beyond for our nursing students, faculty and staff. And so it starts out obviously with education. And we’ve started creating courses around innovation and health foundations of design thinking that is our one course, as well as how we integrate these types of courses and information into other classes and the curriculum throughout Penn Nursing. So though we teach one class, I say it all the time. One class does not make an innovation program or infrastructure. And so looking at from undergrad all the way through to the doctoral level, how we can infuse this knowledge, the skillsets for our students. And then on the extracurricular side, how we can also have our students engage in some of these programs that also teach you not just from a classroom perspective, but from a hands-on active learning perspective about innovation and design thinking and how it’s used in health and health care. So whether that’s through our Penn Nursing Innovation Accelerator program, we’re encouraging students to join events like the nurse hack for health. All of these things are being integrated into the infrastructure of what we’re doing at Penn Nursing to both educate our students with knowledge, but also provide them with the skills, tools and resources to take that knowledge and move it forward again in whatever place they practice.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, that’s fantastic. And, you know, it is critical, Marion, and it’s so great to hear you say this, that this type of curriculum be embedded, that we integrate innovation, that we integrate technology into the curriculum because it has been lacking for a long time. So I love that that you guys are embedding it into it.
Marion Leary:
Yeah, we really are trying to think about it in that way. And we really do want in all of the courses that we’re teaching our students to just think differently. And that’s really what design, thinking, innovation, human-centered design is about. It’s a different mindset in health and health care these days. There’s no denying we have a plethora of wicked problems that need to be solved and we need to start thinking differently about how we’re solving them. And we can only do that if we start to teach our students how to think more creatively in different ways, including what we’re teaching around innovation and design thinking. It’s not that we want to exclude any other ways of learning and solving problems. This is just one more tool in the toolkit.
Saul Marquez:
Totally. And so we see the translation of this in practice. Talk to us a little bit about how these types of programs are helping, but also how you and your team are adding value to the ecosystem.
Hiyam Nadal:
So I would say Marion’s really at the forefront of this, and I’m hoping that more and more nursing schools begin to embed the same educational programs within their school education. However, that’s still not really the norm throughout the country. And so what I’m doing here at the front lines is really trying to teach them by mentoring. So what they do is they come up with an idea to solve a problem. And through my mentoring, I’m teaching them design, thinking and human-centered design. So we’re really trying to shift the paradigm rather than taking equipment, taking protocols, taking everything from the outside in. We are really shifting that paradigm and saying, you know what, we’re closest to the problem and we will have the best solutions. That does a lot of things. So first of all, I think that you come up with better solutions for the patients or the health care system or other providers, but it also brings a lot of joy and empowerment back to the front line. So if you feel like you’ve got control, you have a say. It brings back joy in your life. That’s really been very difficult, especially this past year. And so I’ll give an example where nurse invented a device to help with specimen collection and the other people that we implement on the units were so happy that one of their colleagues did this, it really made sense. They also felt safer and it just ease the pain a little bit, especially last year. So these are the kind of things that go on. And when you’re at the front lines, you have a gazillion ideas. And so we want to be able to harness all of that and really and really help them through that entire methodology.
Saul Marquez:
That’s fantastic. And just that mentorship is so key because you could learn it in school, but then if you don’t have the support in your work environment to nurtures and grow what you learned, then it’s dead. And so I just got goosebumps thinking about that and it’s how important it is to have leadership support like yours is vital. And so it’s great to hear both sides of this and to know that eventually, we’re all going to be receiving care if we’re not already. And to know that the thought and the philosophy and practice is all working together is exciting. Now, you also mentioned it’s not true everywhere. So that’s part of this campaign that we’re doing right. And what SONSIEL is doing. So I’m excited to be part of this and for the listeners to also be part of this journey with you all. And so talk to us a little bit about what you feel makes you different than what’s out there today.
Hiyam Nadal:
Well, for me, I don’t believe there’s any other center for innovations embedded within the health care system that’s totally focused on nurses and other frontline caregivers. So I think it’s a unique program. And so being involved in hackathon, as Mariane has mentioned, really makes that we get as many nurses as possible. We’re very intentional by inviting chief nursing officers and deans of academic institutions to really have them witness and experience that energy during that weekend and see what some of these outcomes are at the end. So they can say, oh, jeez, you know, this is something we really need to do in our educational form or our institutions.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, for sure. And really, I mean, it’s about scaling it and getting people to jump on the bandwagon because it makes a difference. And one of the earlier interviews that we did, the number was like 50 percent, like 50 percent of all care provided is from nurses. I mean, if we’re not doing more to support nurses and involve nurses in product innovation and procedure innovation, then we’re missing the boat, right? Correct.
Hiyam Nadal:
I think just bringing that joy back by empowering them has been for me has been a secondary consequence, which I didn’t realize initially. But I would say to them, so what are you going to do now? You’re going to go out and open up your own company and they’re like, Are you kidding me? I want to stay at the front lines if I can keep inventing like this. So that was like the most powerful thing I’ve heard.
Saul Marquez:
That’s pretty cool. And is that joy, right? I mean, that’s so many people who experience burnout and there are so many nurses burning out right now, like a lot of people talk about physician burnout, but what about nurse burnout? You know, nurses are burning out, too. Bring that joy back.
Hiyam Nadal:
That’s right.
Saul Marquez:
So to both of you, I’d like to hear from both of you on this one. So what do you believe? People need to know that maybe they don’t know about the role of nursing in improving health outcomes and business?
Marion Leary:
So I think for me, my biggest sticking point is that nurses are everywhere. Yes, we are practicing at the bedside, but we’re also in so many other places. We’re in boardrooms and courtrooms. We’re in the community. We’re in Congress. We’re in the military. We’re in research labs. We’re in schools. We’re in all of these places and so many more, which really gives us a breath, depth, and experience unparalleled. And I think most people when they think about nursing, they think about clinical bedside nurses, which makes sense. That is the vast majority of our workforce. But nurses are working in so many other places and are leading in so many other places. And I think it’s really helpful for the public and others in health and health care professions to understand that so they can really understand what nurses bring to the table.
Saul Marquez:
I love it. Yeah, that’s so great to hear, Marion. You’re right. It’s so broad. The number of areas that nurses touch are just so broad. And we need to open up our minds to that fact to know the level of influence that nurses can have. And so Hiyam, how about you? What do you think about that? What do people not know?
Hiyam Nadal:
And I think what Marion said, you know, I would just add that you are with the patients. You’re with the families, you are with the community. So you begin to have such an incredibly deep understanding of not just who you care for, but everything else around them, their lives. And so we talk a lot about this because we naturally apply what we call human-centered design right? So as an example, I can come up with an elaborate nutritional plan for a diabetic. But if I don’t realize that that diabetic has food insecurities, I haven’t really done my job. But nurses have that really initially. They just don’t understand that that’s what they’re applying all the time. So I really do think that when we get involved, we can really, really just have a huge impact on disparities, qualities and inclusion, all of that, because it’s in our nature and we just need to be at the table to help with that.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, that’s a great call out Hiyam. Those things that are taken for granted that nurses do like honing into the social determinants of health, understanding what the gaps are that help that care coordinator after discharge to make sure that the patient doesn’t show up again in the hospital ER for some reason, that could have been avoided and then, yeah, Like the impact of nursing across all of the areas, as Marion mentioned, there’s a lot for us to still learn. And I’m hoping that everybody listening to this is learning a lot. And I know you are. So as we think about those things that we don’t know, there’s also the things that we do know and nurses deliver a lot of care. And so I want to get specific. In this part, I love it if you guys give us an example of when you saw your nursing team provide a great solution to a problem. And so maybe we’ll start with Hiyam. And Marion, maybe from your perspective, from academia, I’m sure there are some examples you could pull. So Hiyam go ahead.
Hiyam Nadal:
So one of the things that what we’re realizing or what we do know is we’ve got to get this word out. So it’s really important, regardless of what you come up with or invent or solve. How do we get the word out? So we’re trying to figure out how do we measure a lot of this and publishing and that’s what we need to do. But it’s interesting because even within my own institution, I’m working with two people a year. But now a gazillion nurses are out there saying, hey, can you help me with this? Can you give me some mentoring? Where do I go with so it is getting the word out? And I think people are very excited about it. And that’s the next phase that I would like to pursue.
Saul Marquez:
Getting the word out. And that’s why you’re here. Well, we’re glad you’re here sharing with all of us the importance of this. And so how about you, Marion? Can you think of an example of a nursing team providing a great solution to a problem?
Marion Leary:
Sure. I mean, we’re not at any loss for examples. In the class that I teach at Penn Nursing, it’s undergrad and grad students. And in that class, they go through the foundations of design thinking over a 12-week period. And we focus on each of the phases of design thinking on real health care, health care problem. And so by the end of that class, they have to have created a solution to a problem that they have addressed with community members or whomever the problem affects. And so we are taking a real human-centered approach to the class that we’re teaching. And what I’m seeing now is a number of the students in that class are taking that idea and moving it forward. So, for example, we had a group of students in the class who were looking at trying to keep kids with autism from eloping. So there was a real big problem in children who have autism. They will leave the house or whatever location they’re at, even when there are multiple adults around keeping an eye on them. And so they leave the house and then they could get hit by a car or have other injuries, get lost, etc. You could see why this would be a parent’s nightmare. Oh, yeah. And so they created the stay safe bracelet, which goes on the child and is able to alert the parent if the child crosses a threshold and then also has a tracker on the bracelet to keep track of them if they are able to leave the house without the parent being alarmed.
Marion Leary:
And so from that class, they enrolled and applied for our Penn Nursing Innovation Accelerator program. They came in second place and now we’re helping them with funding, mentorship and education to take that low fidelity prototype they created in the class and turn it into a business venture. And so that’s just one example of what we’re seeing come out of that class. We have multiple students who’ve gone through this class who are now applying for other programs, winning lots of prizes and really being energized by this new way of thinking, a new way of creating solutions to the problems they’re seeing.
Saul Marquez:
I love that. And the other day, my son gets up. He doesn’t have autism, but he figured out how to open up the gate at the stairs. And I was getting my COVID shot. This was on Saturday. And so I got home and my son’s in the yard. So I figured my wife was awake, but she was sleeping and she freaked out when she figured out that he found that he had to open up that gate. So, yeah, it’s an issue. It’s an issue.
Marion Leary:
There are a lot of ways they could use this solution, not just for kids with autism. That’s their first and main focus, but also with folks for Alzheimer’s and many other applications for this. So we’re really seeing that as our students start to design these solutions, there are many other ways they can start using them as well.
Saul Marquez:
Outstanding. Yeah, it starts with a very specific application.
Hiyam Nadal:
I was going to say it’s amazing what Marion does just with students and, you know, and then they come into their practice and they’re really embedded. And so some of the examples I was just thinking about was we have babies in the neonatal intensive care unit, but we know several years later they do have a language developmental delay. So what can we do while they’re in the NICU to prevent that language? Developmental delays. So we’re almost ready with the prototype for that device. And then we have others that for ALS patients, as an example, lots of times they get readmitted because eventually they can’t feed themselves and this team developed adaptive feeding Kit, so as the patient declines in their movement and they’re able to grasp and things like that, they’ve developed the feeding kit that can actually keep them independently feeding and staying at home longer rather than have to prematurely put them in nursing homes. It’s amazing. It’s amazing what they can come up with.
Saul Marquez:
It is. And when you’re at the front line and you’re seeing these things, that’s where you get creative. You get into the supply closet and you hack that, you figure it out, you turn it into something real.
Marion Leary:
And this is exactly why we need to be educating our nursing students early. We are seeing how much they can create and how many solutions they can come up with in such a short amount of time with a short amount of education and experience. Imagine what the nursing force could do if we were embedding this type of curriculum at the very beginning and all the way through. The solutions that they come up with would just be endless. And so I think this really highlights why we need to start having the nursing curriculum focus in these areas as well.
Hiyam Nadal:
Yeah, totally great. And there is a huge opportunity for innovation that starts with the nurse, but also for companies innovating to include nurses as part of the innovation design. Just an incredible amount that could be gained, whether it be software, medical device, pharma, I mean, you name it, there are opportunities. So are you including nurses today? And if the answer is yes, good for you. But if the answer is no, there’s an opportunity here. Take action because you’re missing out if you’re not. OK, so moving on to setbacks, both of you, me, everybody listening. We all have setbacks. But I’d love to know maybe a key one that you’ve experienced and a key learning that came out of it.
Marion Leary:
I can’t think of any setbacks. My motto is there’s nothing really that’s a setback, especially the human-centered design mindset. Like you learn from everything, fail fast. Take what you’ve learned from that quote-unquote, failure and adapt it, iterate and move forward. So setbacks aren’t really setbacks are just a way to learn and do something a little bit differently than what you potentially were considering. Go ahead, Hiyam.
Hiyam Nadal:
I see setbacks as an opportunity and a learning. But one of the setbacks, I think for me in particular, because we’re trying to push a lot of these innovations is really funding right. I can get them to a certain point to a prototype test. We do risk for companies, we and collaborators. And then what’s next? So how do we get, I don’t know, maybe venture capital. So that’s the sort of setback that I’m trying to work through to get people or get these prototypes to the next level. And so to your point, Saul, you mentioned the industries and stuff. And interestingly enough, we’re having a lot of interest around that. And so we’re beginning to bring together industry players who are interested in before they commercialize their product, they come in and they get expert feedback from us or we collaborate on or co-develop a solution that we both feel or problems. So there are some exciting things happening as we get this word out. And that will be my setback solved is to be able to collaborate with industry that they licensed the product and get it out there. And thanks for the nurses.
Saul Marquez:
I love it. Yeah. And it’s a great opportunity for anybody with funding resources for these types of projects that, you know, that there’s a lot of talent at SONSIEL so when you check out the show notes of today’s podcast, you can get in touch with Marion, you could get in touch with him or any of the other nurse leaders. And if you have some money that you’re looking to invest, check out SONSIEL, because there are some good opportunities to invest and some ideas that honestly might be sleepy ideas. You just need to turn them around and get them to action. So what are you guys most excited about today other than this. I’m excited about what we’re doing here, putting nurses at the forefront.
Saul Marquez:
What are both of you excited about?
Marion Leary:
I just want to echo the funding thing. I think if more people knew what nurses were coming up with solutions that they’re creating, they would be throwing money at nursing schools, nursing programs, health systems, specifically for nursing innovation. And so I would just say I’m really excited about amplifying nurses as leaders in this area and to be able to showcase what we are doing because we are solving problems that most people don’t know exist and that no one else is solving problems for because of all the reasons that he explained and what we’ve been talking about today, the skills, the knowledge, the experience that nurses have really do allow for this type of boom in nursing innovation and entrepreneurship, that, again, if more people knew about it, maybe there wouldn’t be that funding problem.
Saul Marquez:
Great call out, Marion. Hiyam, what are you excited about?
Hiyam Nadal:
I’m excited about. Well, I’m very excited about the fact that we have been able to innovate. So we’re sort of agnostic, high tech, low tech, low tech. And so we’re able to capture all of that. And also the level of meeting human dignity is just beautiful. And that’s what I’m most excited about. So, again, for the examples of ALS patients being able to stay independent, feeding themselves, it’s just we do a lot around human dignity.
Saul Marquez:
That’s fantastic. Yeah, it’s exciting to help people in the way that we can. And health care and human dignity is at the center of it. I mean, nobody ever wants to feel undignified in one of our most vulnerable moments when we’re in the care of really the hospital and the caregivers. So I think it’s fantastic. great point. We are at a time it’s crazy. The time just flies. So what I want to do before we conclude is share a closing thought with the listeners and then the best place that they can reach out to you if they want to continue the conversation with you. Obviously, there’s SONSIEL. sonsiel.org. But maybe any resources or recommendations you’d made, like Marion, maybe your podcast, this is a good chance for you to plug that here, et cetera. So why don’t you guys go ahead and give us a closing thought and the best way to get in touch with you?
Hiyam Nadal:
My closing thought is come talk to us. We would love to showcase a lot of our innovations and what we’re working on and partner with you. That’s my closing thought. And I can be reached at SONSIEL or LinkedIn or at Mass General Hospital.
Saul Marquez:
Awesome. Thank you, Hiyam. Marion?
Marion Leary:
We didn’t really mention it, but nothing is done in a vacuum. Innovation like health care, is a team sport. And so you need engineers, designers, physicians, nurses. You need all of these people together at the table, but you need nurses there, too. We shouldn’t be an afterthought and nurses should be leading in those spaces. And so, please, like I said, if you are a startup, a tech company, whatever, and you’re focusing on health and health care, you need to have a nurse on your team. And there are plenty of nurses now and always who are able to add value to what you’re doing. If you would like to learn more about what we’re doing at Penn Nursing, obviously you can go to our website, nursing.upenn.edu/innovation. You can check out the Amplified Nursing podcast. We highlight nurses who are leading the way in science, innovation, policy, research and practice. And you can connect with me via the website on Twitter at Marion Leary. And I’m very easy to find in other places.
Saul Marquez:
Awesome Marion. Thank you. Really appreciate you and him. Really appreciate you as well. Thank you for joining us today. And folks, hope you walked away with some more pearls On on the benefits and importance of nursing at the center of health and health care. Thank you both for spending time with us.
Hiyam and Marion:
Thank you so much.
Saul Marquez:
Thanks for tuning in to the SONSIEL Nurse Leadership series. For the Show notes and to learn more about how you could have nurses join your mission, visit us at OutcomesRocket.Health/SONSIEL. That’s OutcomesRocket.Health/SONSIEL.
Sonix has many features that you’d love including upload many different filetypes, world-class support, collaboration tools, transcribe multiple languages, and easily transcribe your Zoom meetings. Try Sonix for free today.
