Nurses need to be at the table to innovate

Nurses speaking at a Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) virtual gathering last week made the case that nurses—the people closest to the problem—need to be at the tables where innovations are devised to improve patient care. They said inefficiencies in the care environment and technologies that create more work than they alleviate are contributing to nurse burnout. Leaders from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston and Saint Elizabeth Health Care in Brighton, Mass., said they have designed initiatives to harness the ingenuity of frontline nurses. At MGH they proactively elicit input from nurses. This year, they will launch a competition to spur innovation and find remedies to the pain points identified by frontline staff. (Healthcare IT News article, 8/16/21)