ANA’s 2018 Conference: Tapping into Innovative Thinking

Participants are gathering in Orlando, FL, through March 23 to learn about and share successful strategies and real-world innovations around quality, safety, and staffing that they can bring back to their own facilities.

In her opening remarks, Cipriano pointed to the evolving landscape in health care, such as Apple’s entrance into the EHR game with Apple Health and CVS’s purchase of insurer Aetna.

“This is our landscape in 2018, and disruption is ubiquitous,” Cipriano said. “The landscape may be changing, but we are steadfast in our goals to provide the safest, highest quality health care to all.”

After briefly sharing research on staffing, Cipriano spoke to ANA’s theme for 2018, the “Year of Advocacy.” She raised nurses’ past and ongoing advocacy on the legislative front, as well as self-advocacy. Regarding the latter, she addressed ANA’s innovative Healthy Nurse, Healthy Nation™ Grand Challenge to improve RNs’ health and well-being, and another ANA initiative, #EndNurseAbuse, which in part, calls for zero-tolerance policies when it comes to violence against nurses.

Cipriano also announced the launching of a new program, the ANA Innovation Awards™. They are made possible through the generosity of BD, a global medical technology company, and will be presented to a nurse and to a nurse-led team who best exemplify nurse-led innovation. (Stay tuned for more details on this new initiative.)

Opening keynote speaker Nicholas Webb, a world-renowned business futurist, inventor, and author, then took to the stage to speak about future innovation in health care, as well as the critical role nurses will play in it.

“Our patients are looking for a ‘consumerized’ experience,” said Webb, who noted that companies like Amazon have helped to fuel this trend with services like Amazon Prime. “Nurses’ role in how we deliver consumer experiences in absolutely critical.”

Continuing into the future, he sees the majority of nurse-led innovations as focusing on new ways to improve workflow, quality, safety, and the patient experience. And he said innovation will be a core competency within nursing.

That said, Webb emphasized the ongoing importance of innovation around technology and how it will affect health care. One key way involves the use of wearable technology that gathers more, good data to help healthcare professionals anticipate disease processes in patients sooner, and in turn, intervene sooner.

Using crowdsourcing—a human-powered, problem-solving paradigm in which both experts and peers participate—nurses will produce fresh, interesting, and beneficial solutions to their toughest quality, safety, and staffing challenges.

Running from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. ET, follow this session on Twitter at #ANAhackathon.

At the conference, participants also have the opportunity to take in networking activities, learn more quality and innovation strategies through more than 140 poster presentations, and visit more than 225 exhibitors.

Follow the conference on Twitter at #ANAQICon or Facebook.

Read more about the ANA Quality and Innovation Conference and plan to attend next year.