Three leaders from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing in Philadelphia have published an article outlining the actionable steps the school took to promote and integrate innovation into their nursing curriculum.
The article, "Creating an Innovation Infrastructure in Academic Nursing," was published in the Journal of Professional Nursing's January-February edition.
The authors from Penn Nursing — Marion Leary, MSN, RN; Antonia Villarruel, PhD, RN; and Therese Richmond, PhD, RN — call for U.S. nursing schools to integrate innovation as a central driver in their education programs.
Creating a shared meaning of innovation is the first step to successfully embed innovation into a nursing school, according to the article.
"Developing a disciplinary-specific perspective of innovation is a first step to guiding curricular changes and enhancements" said Dr. Villarruel. "This perspective will communicate to interdisciplinary colleagues and the public nursing's role and focus in innovation and can be used for forging partnerships to address specific issues and problems."
Once the definition is established, the authors outline a number of other steps schools can take to foster an infrastructure that supports innovation, such as building relationships across schools and developing faculty champions of innovation.
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