When You Can't Pick a Hat, Just Wear Them All

Breanna Hetland, PhD, RN, CCRN, Jessica Castner, PhD, RN-BC, FAEN, FAAN, Taryn Amberson, MPH, RN-BC

"One of the challenges of wearing so many hats is that I love each and every one of them!"
~ Andrea Davis Pickney

Nurse, academic, innovator, entrepreneur, founder, family caregiver. On that list, "nurse" is the only "hat" we actually ever set out to wear. Well into our career journeys, we’ve amassed very accessorized closets. Little did we anticipate that, in launching our entrepreneurial adventures (The Family Room, Castner Incorporated, and more), we would discover the need for every single hat we’ve acquired along the way!

From bedside caregivers to trusted policy advisors, each role has added layers to our career journeys. Reflecting on these paths, it's evident that success hinges on the quality of the team, mentors/sponsors, and supporters surrounding an innovative idea. In this blog post, Breanna has the honor of presenting the Family Room as her brainchild to connect with and inspire other nurse innovators and executives.

The Family Room – Humanizing the hospitalization experience

In the current state of health care, the hospitalization experience is in disarray. At the Family Room, we are redefining the boundaries of care by researching, designing, and building tools that bring family members closer to the bedside — offering them the guidance and support needed to navigate the uncertainty of the hospitalization experience. This mission is deeply personal for me, not only as a nurse but also as a family caregiver who has experienced the frustration of this reality from every angle.

• Patients feel isolated, reduced to being just a number or a disease.
• Families find themselves overwhelmed and disconnected.
• The burden on nurses continues to increase with the ongoing exodus from the profession.

These are complicated problems to solve. Family participation is often limited to passive roles and lacks consistency in implementation. There aren't enough accessible tools at the bedside to guide families on how to best contribute to patient care. The Family Room steps into this gap by providing families with the foundations they need to contribute to patient care actively and successfully.

Moving from a good idea to a marketable solution

We love nursing innovation! But the process of transitioning an innovation into clinical practice is fraught with complexities and can span several years to several decades. Moving innovations like the Family Room from a researchable idea to a marketable solution continues to require a long list of resources. Here are a few priority considerations we want to share from our journey:

• Entrepreneurial mindset: Developing an entrepreneurial mindset involves cultivating a willingness to take risks, adaptability, and a strategic approach to problem-solving.
• Collaboration and interdisciplinary teams: Collaboration is crucial for commercialization. Nurse innovators need training in collaborative skills to build effective teams, engage with industry partners, and navigate the complexities of bringing a product to market. Bringing together individuals with diverse expertise in business, entrepreneurship, market analysis, regulatory affairs, intellectual property, and technical architecture enhances the practical applicability of the work.
• Engage stakeholders early through customer discovery: Customer discovery is the initial and iterative process of understanding customers’ situations, needs, and pain points. Conducting customer discovery helps engage key stakeholders, including health care providers, patients, and policymakers, from the early stages of the work. This ensures that the innovation aligns with real-world needs and increases the likelihood of being embraced in clinical and public health settings.
• Innovation testing design: When testing new innovations, design studies with real-world applicability in mind. Consider factors such as feasibility, scalability, and ease of implementation to enhance the chances of successful translation to practice. Moreover, select study outcomes that can contribute to value propositions that are appealing to potential buyers.
• Communication and presentation skills: Strong and diverse communication and presentation skills are essential for effectively conveying the value of the product to potential investors, collaborators, and end-users. A business pitch is a very different form of dissemination than an academic presentation. Learning how to communicate in different ways to different audiences is a critical skill.
• Other innovation resources: Additional innovation resources that aided our journey include the ANA Innovation Guide, the Business Model Canvas framework, and the U.S. National Science Foundation's Innovation Corps (I-Corps), which supports innovators with teams to explore commercialization potential. In 2021, I-Corps expanded to include U.S. universities. Many economic development groups offer incubator and accelerator services and provide financial and other resources such as mentorship and networking opportunities.

Wearing all the hats

The journey of filling our hat wardrobe continues with new and advanced skills – but with the help of expert collaborators and a team full of passionate change agents, we continue to acquire skills along the way that give the wisdom to discern precisely which hat(s) to don at any given moment.

To close, you are invited to connect with the Family Room and be part of this transformative journey. We want to speak to people who can shed light on the current state of family engagement during serious hospitalization (acute care clinical nurses, nurse leaders in patient and family experience, technology, electronic health record integration, and c-suite executives). Come join our cause by signing up for a short interview!