NursePitch events fuel innovation in nursing

Lisa Ousley, DNP, RN, FNP, saw a need in healthcare and created a solution.

Lisa Ousley, DNP, RN, FNP

A prototype of Ousley’s instructional dermatology surface models innovation earned her first place and $7,500 of seed money at the NursePitch event during the American Nurses Association’s 2019 Quality and Innovation Conference last year. The conference focuses on innovation in nursing.

Ousley and her team create two- and three-dimensional instructional dermatology surface models of skin lesions. Nurse instructors and others can place these realistic-looking lesions on humans and mannequins to help educate students and clinicians about how to detect melanoma and other skin diseases.

Ousley, an assistant professor at East Tennessee State University’s College of Nursing Graduate Programs, came up with the idea while touring the school’s simulation lab.

“I looked around and saw all the IT and high-tech products that they had to train nurses and asked at the end of the tour, ‘Where are your dermatology tools?’” Ousley said.

The answer: There were none. Ousley learned there are only a few dermatology teaching tools on the market, and they are expensive.

Seeing an idea through from concept to reality

“A lightbulb went off in my head,” she said.

Ousley, a primary care nurse for almost 30 years, said she ran to her office and got one of the high-resolution, digital photographs of a melanoma she used to teach students. She manipulated the image to remove surrounding skin pixels, went to the hardware store and bought some window cling then darted over to use an older laser printer a few doors down from her office.

“I then took that photograph that I manipulated, printed it on the cling and literally ran back upstairs to put it on the mannequin, and it looked like the mannequin had melanoma,” she said.

Ousley put her creation on a colleague’s skin and it appeared the colleague had melanoma.

Feeling like she was onto something, Ousley assembled the people and services she’d need to go to the next level, including a nearby plastics company, a graphic design firm and engineering and digital media experts on campus. She partnered with nurse colleagues Retha Gentry, DNP, RN, FNP, and Candice Short, DNP, RN, FNP.

innovation in nursing

From left, colleagues Retha Gentry, DNP, RN, FNP; Lisa Ousley, DNP, RN, FNP; and Candice Short, DNP, RN, FNP, partnered to create the instructional dermatology surface models innovation at East Tennessee State University’s College of Nursing Graduate Programs.

That was three years and a lot of hard work ago.

“I just had such a passion about the clinical urgency of improving (the diagnosis of) skin cancer and many dermatological diseases,” she said. “This could really fill a practice gap. As we got a little more sophisticated, it has just gotten better and better.”

NursePitch puts innovation in nursing on the map

The $7,500 and experience pitching the innovation in nursing at the ANA’s NursePitch event gave instructional dermatology surface models a platform.

Ousley was …read more

Read full article here: nurse.com