1.
About Erik
Erik works full-time as an insights research associate for Cambridge Design Partnership and part-time as an ICU nurse. Erik began his nursing career as a New Graduate Fellow in the ER after graduating from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing. During his nursing program he enrolled in Biomedical Engineering courses which helped him determine his future goal: to leverage his experience at the bedside to identify problems and to design solutions that will revolutionize healthcare.
This Fellowship truly gave value to nurses as innovators, in a way that not much else could have, and really solidified the belief that nurses can chart their own course.
Erik’s J&J Nursing Innovation Fellow Journey
Erik initially pursued the Fellowship to develop new relationships and skills that would facilitate reaching his goals of improving the lives of patients, families and healthcare staff. During his Fellowship, Erik experienced transformational personal and professional change. He finished a master’s degree in biomedical engineering, welcomed his first child with his wife Julia, and left his position as a full-time ICU nurse to contribute the nursing perspective to medical device design. Erik still works part time in the ICU and brings the knowledge and experience he gains each day to his role at Cambridge Design Partnership. As a Fellow, Erik deeply appreciated the community of like-minded, innovative individuals, who all came together to try and solve the biggest problems facing healthcare.
For Erik, it’s essential to both “build the right thing and build the thing right.” Historically, medical devices have been built by engineers with little experience at the bedside. Erik wants to change that, by working with companies—including his current employer—to design medical devices that fit into the workflows and processes of healthcare workers, not the other way around. In other words, designing medical devices for nurses, by nurses. Without the Fellowship, Erik would not have had the community support and credibility to pursue this passion.
2.
Specialty: Board Certified Psych. Mental Health DNP, CEO/Clinician, POB Psychiatry, Creator, TRAUMA SHIELD, My Healing Narratives™, TEDxTalk Speaker, Bestselling Author, Mental Health Media Analyst - featured on: CBS, NBC, FOX, ABC, Good Morning Arizona. Founder, Princess of Suburbia Foundation: The Adassa Adumori Project.
Location: Tucson, AZ
About Princess Fumi
Dr. Stephanie Fumi Hancock, an African Princess living in diaspora, is a Psychiatric Mental Health Doctor of Nurse Practice (DNP) and a 30-year social work and psychiatry veteran. Popularly known as Your Compassionate Trauma Care™ Expert and a Life Rehab™ Ambassador by her patients and online global community, Princess Fumi is a bestselling author who brings health and wealth to her audience by tackling discussions around mental health such as depression, anxiety, suicide ideations, poor self-image and other mental health disorders.
Princess Fumi is the first African American to speak at TEDx TALK Al Anjal National Schools platform in Saudi Arabia and the first woman recipient of the Nollywood African Films (NAFCA) “African Oscar” in Hollywood, California (a literary arts award). With her love for the literary arts and behavioral health sciences, she has managed to strike a balance between the two, through her online TV /podcast shows, documentaries, books, and her mental health-wellness presentations. To date, she has written over 24 books. Her book, Wake Up Girl, You Are Worthy has been received by organizations, ministries, and colleges, in Africa, USA, Pakistan and other countries as a success strategy tool.
The Fellowship program actually gave us a sisterhood and a brotherhood where we could come together and begin to create and make an impact in the world.
Princess Fumi’s J&J Nursing Innovation Fellow Journey
At the start of the Fellowship, and the COVID-19 pandemic, Princess Fumi and her husband packed up and moved from Tennessee to Arizona, where she felt she could better help nurses with their trauma. Princess Fumi was drawn to the Fellowship because she had been looking at ways to blend technology and innovation to bring valuable resources to those dealing with mental illness. Now, she is focusing her efforts on developing a self-care mental wellness solution targeting vulnerable populations which include nurses on the frontline, families with children, teenagers and adults, as part of her TRAUMA SHIELD™ Healing Narratives approach. During the Fellowship, she opened her practice in Arizona and continued to work on her innovation project.
For Princess Fumi, the Fellowship showed her that anything is possible, and she credits the success of her innovation to the other Fellows who provided her with a sense of community, credibility and accountability. She will continue to use her innovation-mindset to bridge the gap between her two homes, America and Africa, to improve the mental health of those who are suffering. She believes that the Fellowship program allowed her create collaborations with her peers and truly make an impact on the world.
3.
About Charlene
Charlene Platon is the Director of Ambulatory Nursing at Stanford Health Care (SHC), where she collaborates with operational and clinical partners to advance, develop, refine and innovate ambulatory nursing clinical delivery operations throughout the enterprise. Previously, Charlene was a Manager of Advanced Practice in the Center for Advanced Practice at SHC, with a primary role of leading process and quality improvement initiatives to optimize practice for advanced practice providers. Charlene pioneered and facilitated SHC’s first Advanced Practice Provider (APP) Administrative Fellowship program to mentor and position expert clinicians as future healthcare leaders. In addition, she is a member of the Innovation Tech Governance Steering Committee at SHC, representing innovation in ambulatory nursing.
This Fellowship is the proudest I’ve ever felt to be a nurse. It was because of this Fellowship and being surrounded by a community that’s so supportive and so inspiring that motivated me on my pursuit to help others.
Charlene’s J&J Nursing Innovation Fellow Journey
For Charlene, becoming a Fellow couldn’t have come at a better time in her career. She joined the Fellowship to focus on bringing nurse-led innovation to the forefront of healthcare by developing a digital solution to promote the well-being of nurses and clinicians. Charlene credits the Fellowship as a multiplier in her career, collaborating with peers to bring the lens of nurse innovation to conversations and opportunities far beyond the bedside. Currently, Charlene is creating tools that tackle nurse wellbeing head-on and combat nurse burnout. Her mission is to tackle nurse burnout and create a professional environment that she had always envisioned and aspired to have as a nurse. Her proximity and intimate understanding of the challenges facing nurses today serves to guide her in tackling them head on.
The Fellowship has opened doors for Charlene that she couldn’t have imagined prior and has empowered her to think deeply about the impact she can make both as a nurse and an innovator. As she begins to seek partners to bring her wellbeing application to nurses across the nation, the Fellowship continues to serve as a source of inspiration and confidence in her ability to lead and inspire innovation.
4.
About Deidra
Deidra has worked as a staff RN in the St. Cloud Hospital since 2008. From infants to elders, she has provided direct patient care in the acute care hospital setting, most recently within the Post Anesthesia Care Unit. Deidra graduated from the College of St. Benedict with a Bachelor of Arts degree specializing in music performance and completed her Master of Music in music performance from the University of Minnesota. She completed her Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree at St. Cloud State University and earned a Doctor of Nursing Practice specializing in Integrative Health & Healing from the University of Minnesota. As a part of her doctoral work, Deidra helped to create a business case and program proposal for an integrative therapies program at the St. Cloud Hospital. She has also served as adjunct nursing faculty for the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University.
Opportunities to innovate, like this Fellowship, don’t come often for a staff nurse. Nurses at all states and levels need these resources – they are closer to the problem and often know the solutions.
Deidra J&J Nursing Innovation Fellow Journey
Deidra was drawn to the Fellowship because it provided staff nurses unique opportunities to innovate. She had recognized an urgent need: mitigating a severe lack of awareness among nurses about perinatal mental health challenges. She saw parents suffering in silence and realized that nurses, the ones closest to the bedside, were best equipped to recognize the signs of mental health struggles and provide birthing people and new parents with the care they need. The Fellowship allowed Deidra to develop a unique partnership with Postpartum Support International and the leadership at St. Cloud Hospital, implementing a program for nurses to receive Perinatal Mental Health Certification (PMH-C), a certificate that arms nurses with the knowledge they need to integrate effective mental healthcare into the experience of perinatal patients. Though the PMH-C is not yet accredited, Deidra is working closely with a committee at PSI to finalize the national accreditation of the certificate (I.C.E./NCCA) and make it more widely accessible and desirable for employees of hospital systems across the country.
For Deidra, the Fellowship has inspired confidence and fresh drive to effect change on a larger scale. Sharing what she’s learned through the Fellowship with her colleagues and coworkers back home, she believes that opportunities like the Fellowship are just as valuable for staff nurses as they are for researchers. Deidra hopes to extend her Fellowship experience to begin working in healthcare policy and advocacy, but never wants to venture too far and lose her connection to the bedside.
5.
About Olivia
Olivia graduated with a BSN from Marquette University in 1997 and then joined the Peace Corps to serve as a health service volunteer in Guinea, West Africa. Olivia’s time in Guinea initiated an appreciation for innovation and created an opportunity to learn how to practice nursing with limited resources. Over the past twenty-two years she has worked as a nurse in Neurosurgical and Emergency Departments. She completed her MSN with a focus on nursing education at Lewis University.
Olivia has focused on nursing innovation since the outset of her studies at Northern Illinois University, where her PhD research has centered around the work of nurse innovators throughout the history of the profession. Currently, Olivia is a clinical nurse educator and simulation coordinator at Rush Copley Medical Center where she is extremely proud to coordinate the mentoring program and the transition to practice program for new graduate nurses. Olivia credits Florence Nightingale as her nursing mentor and enjoys representing nursing during career days at local middle schools to promote the profession of nursing.
The Fellowship gave us the opportunity to grow as innovators. We all felt like we had innovation in us, but the Fellowship became the platform for us to build our credibility and explore new avenues to serve our communities as nurse innovators.
Olivia’s J&J Nursing Innovation Fellow Journey
As she began the Fellowship, Olivia combined her academic research and resources and tools from the program to address a core need across the nursing profession. Olivia noticed that nurses and healthcare practitioners at large did not have a central place to reference both the pedigree of nurse innovation and contemporary ideas that continue to change bedside care every day. She built an index that notates nurse innovation both as a tool and reference for practitioners, but also as a demonstrable example of nurses representing the best of healthcare innovation. Aggregating the data on nurse innovation has brought insights on trends, patterns, gaps and needs for new nurse innovation, offering the profession a new tool to continue to improve, enhance and innovate care delivery. Through the Fellowship, Olivia leveraged resources and a robust network to build a comprehensive tool that continues to grow alongside the ever-expanding index of nurse innovation.
Olivia believes that the Fellowship is a vote of confidence in nurses and an important opportunity for nurses to embrace innovation, something most nurses are typically not exposed to or encouraged to champion. For her, memorializing and encouraging nurse innovation through her Nurse Innovator Index was the perfect way to utilize the JJNIF platform and push the profession forward.
6.
About Jenniferre
Jennifferre is a nurse in the nationally ranked, level IV Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Valley Children’s Hospital. Jennifferre’s commitment to the nursing profession is expansive; she is a participant in the American Nurses Association’s Mentorship Program, an Academic Mentor at Valley Children’s Hospital, and participates in departmental shared governance committees. During Jennifferre’s nursing career she has developed an exceptional ability to create innovative solutions to improve care for patients at the bedside. Her entrepreneurial spirit and dedication to patient care led Jennifferre to invent a device that optimizes delivery of neonatal nutrition (currently being reviewed for patentability).
Nursing school does not teach you about state sales tax or how to deal with international manufacturing. Yet all these things are necessary to build a business, grow it and impact lives. Utilizing resources, asking for help and leaning into what my innovation project needed to grow has allowed me to move the needle in healthcare.
Jenniferre’s J&J Nursing Innovation Fellow Journey
The Fellowship has helped Jennifferre continue to solve the problems and challenges she has encountered throughout her career. From developing tools to redesigning worksheets and staff resources, Jennifferre has had a mind for innovation from the outset. Jennifferre’s visionary designs and projects affect interdepartmental change every day and improve efficiency and quality of care throughout the hospital. Never being satisfied with status quo or accepting complacency, Jennifferre is always looking at ways current practices and products can be improved for practitioners and patients. Her most successful innovation to date, Lumify Care, has led to a fruitful business partnership, a profitable commercial enterprise, and a clear path towards creating lasting change for the comfort and wellbeing of nurses everywhere.
Becoming a J&J Fellow has helped facilitate new opportunities and growth for Jennifferre. Most importantly, it has pushed her to believe in herself and to champion her own innovation by jumping headfirst at every opportunity to learn and grow that has come her way.
7.
About Michelle
Dr. Michelle Munro-Kramer is an Assistant Professor of Nursing and the Suzanne Bellinger Feetham Professor of Nursing at the University of Michigan, School of Nursing. Michelle’s clinical background includes certifications as a Family Nurse Practitioner and Certified Nurse Midwife, which she currently uses to provide reproductive and sexual health in community settings. Michelle’s program of research focuses on trauma, comprehensive care of vulnerable populations, and missed opportunities for care within domestic and international contexts. At the University of Michigan, Michelle teaches graduate and undergraduate students, where she developed the first undergraduate elective course focused on gender-based violence.
Michelle has adapted and piloted an innovative web-based app, called MKit, focused on healthy relationships and sexual violence using a life skills perspective. She is currently working on evaluating this app within different types of college and university settings.
The Fellowship gave us time to think about problems and come up with solutions. It was both a safe space and a push that we all can do this. We just needed the support and encouragement to help us along.
Michelle’s J&J Nursing Innovation Fellow Journey
When Michelle first started in the Fellowship program, she was working on research and accessibility for her MKit app. She was initially interested in the Fellowship to contribute her skills and knowledge as a nurse to improve education for healthcare providers and primary prevention youth programs. However, she ended up shifting her project to focus more on the university students she works with regularly to begin to cultivate an innovative mindset while they are still studying. From her own experience with mentorship as a nursing student, Michelle knew how important it was for her students to be exposed to innovation at the start of their careers. This culminated in an inaugural Innovate 4 Change event, that brought together interdisciplinary groups of students to develop innovative solutions to complex healthcare problems.
Michelle believes in the power of mentorship to enhance innovation at all levels of career and education. And the student group she created bears striking similarities to the comradery and community within the Fellowship program. From Michele’s perspective, the Fellowship provided her with the critical support system that she needed to flourish. She will continue to expand her program through annual hackathons, larger student cohorts and global missions, and she will carry the values of the Fellowship along with her each step of the way.
8.
About Hiyam
Hiyam came to Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in 1994 as part of a team that re-established obstetrics after a 40-year hiatus and immediately began to implement a unique nurse care model that greatly expanded the role of nurses and created a “medical home” in obstetrics. As Nurse Director of both OB and GYN Ambulatory Divisions at MGH and satellites in Waltham and Danvers, Hiyam helped to design IT programs such as the ambulatory patient tracking system and an OB electronic medical record which subsequently sold to Hewlett Packard. In 2010, she obtained a certificate in genetics and in 2013 an MBA before recently becoming Director of the Center for Innovations in Care Delivery at MGH.
She has also been involved in numerous healthcare and nursing Hackathons. She is a judge for Johnson and Johnson’s Nurses Innovate Quickfire Challenge, will be an inaugural member of the Nursing Advisory Board for the World Healthcare Congress, and is a founding member and on the Board of Directors for Society of Nurse Scientists, Entrepreneurs, Innovators and Leaders.
The J&J Innovation Fellowship lent itself to instant credibility for my work. Everybody was looking at me differently, like I must know what I’m doing. The Fellowship helped me accelerate what I wanted to accomplish at my Innovation Center.
Hiyam’s J&J Nursing Innovation Fellow Journey
For Hiyam, becoming a Nursing Innovation Fellow was a license to extend her work as a nurse innovator into a lifelong career as a nursing innovation leader, both at Mass General Hospital and across the world. Her passion is in building models for innovation, inspired and designed entirely by nurses and a frontline workforce. Her process to cultivate, model and action nurse innovation in her hospital system has led to a multitude of new nurse ideas becoming implemented broadly within the institution.
Over the past year, Hiyam’s success through the Fellowship and through her initiatives at the Center for Innovations in Care Delivery has caught the attention of international nurses eager to implement the same kind of change for their own communities. Hiyam is advising nurses and healthcare practitioners as far as Africa and Israel to begin to establish similar incubation centers for nurse-led innovation. Hiyam is driven by a business-minded approach for better outcomes across a new healthcare network. Since becoming a Fellow, Hiyam has been identified both internally within her hospital, but also on a national scale, for her innovative work, drive and spirit. Hiyam reflects on the Fellowship as a profound and meaningful opportunity that gave her the right mix of credibility and exposure to continue to expand and create new environments that foster nurse innovation.
9.
About Joanna
Joanna worked in kidney transplantation for over a decade at #1-ranked institutions in New York and New Jersey. First as a nurse coordinator and later as a nurse informaticist where she implemented Epic electronic medical records and led quality improvement. Exposed to design thinking through a master’s series at Stanford’s d.school, she taught the first course in design thinking at New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing to graduate nurse informatics students starting in 2017. She went on to become a design thinking lead in 2018-2019 for an Alex and Rita Hillman grant to integrate the course into an accelerated undergraduate nursing curriculum, which has so far reached over 400 undergraduate students. Her work has been presented at the National League of Nursing Education Summit and was published in Innovative Strategies for Teaching Nursing and The Rebel Nurse Handbook. Joanna is also a founding member of the Society of Nurse Scientists, Innovators, Entrepreneurs, and Leaders (SONSIEL). In summer 2022, Joanna will graduate with her Doctor of Education in organizational change and will complete her dissertation that overlaps with her action-learning project.
Thanks to my other Fellows, I feel like I have a tremendous insight into nursing on much broader scale—other than what’s happening on my unit, or what’s happening in my hospital, or what’s happening in my state.
Joanna’s J&J Nursing Innovation Fellow Journey
Joanna credits the J&J Nursing Innovation Fellowship with helping her think bigger and the experience gave her the confidence to know she can execute her big ideas. For her action-learning project, Joanna wanted to explore a more complex, nuanced history of nursing that—until recently—was often ignored by the broader profession. She established the Nurses You Should Know project, an online micro-learning campaign that invites nurses and allies to engage with storytelling and help narrow the representation gap of nurses of color. So far, Joanna has profiled over 100 past and present-day nurses, drove over 75k impressions on social media, and her project was featured in two articles, two podcasts, and one conference.
Joanna feels the Fellowship offered her a broad and diverse insight into what is happening in the nursing profession beyond academia and the clinical bedside—a vastly different experience than if she were to just go to work at the same hospital every day. She believes it challenged her to embrace complex situations such as racism and health equity. Overall, giving her the confidence to “reclaim the nursing narrative” head on, bringing to light the crucial contributions of nurses, both past and present, that are often overlooked or unknown.
10.
About Tim
Timothy W. Thomas has worked as a registered nurse for 18 years and started his career in the U.S. Army at the original Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC). At WRAMC, he wrote a policy on pressure ulcer prevention and treatment that was later utilized as the framework for a hospital-wide policy. After a short tour in Iraq, he did an inter-service transfer from the U.S. Army to the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS). In his current position as Regional Nurse Consultant/Medical Asset Support Team RN for the Southeast Region, he has led a team of nurses to develop evidence-based nursing protocols for urgent/emergent situations and for nonemergent, routine care.
He has also co-led the development of the Nursing Services Program Statement for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. In December 2014, he was awarded a full scholarship through the American Nurses Association (ANA) to complete his master’s in Nursing in Leadership and Administration at Capella University, which he completed in March 2017. He has worked with the ANA on researching Barriers to RN Scope of Practice and is currently working with the ANA to revise the Correctional Nursing Scope and Standards of Practice manual.
The Fellowship has given me the ability to overcome imposter syndrome and realize that I do have the skills and capabilities to impact change, to lead change, and to be a strong advocate for my patients.
Tim’s J&J Nursing Innovation Fellow Journey
Tim joined the Fellowship to improve the quality of care for his patient population and gain leadership experience and skills that he had previously only read about in books. The focus of his innovation project was to change one word: inmate. In some corrections facilities, staff who are accustomed to referring to patients as inmates might not realize the extent to which the word carries negative connotations and impacts the care that they provide. The nurse’s role is not to punish the inmate, the nurse’s role is to care for the patient. Over the course of the Fellowship, Tim presented his research on the importance of using humanizing language at the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC) Spring Symposium and used this research as the basis for a white paper recommending terminology changes across all BOP documentation, which he submitted to his agency leadership.
Tim remains hopeful and grateful for the support of the Fellowship. He recounts the experience as both humbling and impactful, since the program provided him with the skills and tools to magnify his impact. Tim credits the Fellowship with providing amazing connections and leadership training that have given him opportunities to continue to advocate for his patient population. He was recently selected by Admiral Aisha Mix to lead the team to update the Federal Public Health Service Nursing Strategic Plan, a connection he credits to his time in the Fellowship.
11.
About Lydel
Lydel A. Wright often attributes his passion for innovation and creativity to his experience being raised in a single parent home. Graduating high school as a Licensed Practical Nurse, Lydel knew that nursing would be a forever part of his story. After serving as a Nurse Leader for the last 12+ years managing several multi-million-dollar entities, Lydel began his pursuit toward entrepreneurship working to develop and commercialize his healthcare invention, SafeWatch, which focused on aging in place and clinical workflow redesign.
Lydel enjoys giving back through volunteering at the local level through his church, as well as through his non-profit, The EmPACT Foundation, where they are empowering people to act through serving their communities. Lydel also enjoys serving on a national scale through the Horatio Alger Association.
The Fellowship has really given me a good framework to create opportunities for others, and when you get an opportunity like this, it is important to reach back and pull somebody up with you.
Lydel’s J&J Nursing Innovation Fellow Journey
Lydel saw the Fellowship as an opportunity to hone in on a specific issue in bedside care that he had long since identified as something he needed to act on. As CEO of The Access Gown, Lydel is utilizing the Fellowship as an opportunity to take his newly designed hospital gown that combines patient dignity with practitioner utility from proof of concept to nationwide product. Lydel views his Access Gown as a natural extension of his efforts to provide not only for his local community, but for patients and practitioners everywhere who face the same challenges with a 100-year-old design in the hospital gown.
As Lydel moves forward from the Fellowship, he is preparing to begin production of his gown, and move quickly with market presence in hospital systems across the country. For Lydel, the J&J Nurse Innovation Fellowship has been an opportunity to transform his practice as a nurse innovator, his new company and his community through healthcare innovation.
12.
About Briana
Briana began her nursing career at the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock (CHaD) in Lebanon, NH in 2013 as a Nurse Resident on the Pediatrics Unit and became the nurse educator for the unit in 2016. In 2018, she transitioned to the role of clinical nurse supervisor and has served as adjunct faculty for pediatric nursing clinical and senior immersion courses. During the fellowship, Briana gravitated toward systems and community-level healthcare, shifting into home health and hospice as Manager of Clinical Quality and Care Management at Visiting Nurse and Hospice (VNH) for New Hampshire and Vermont at Dartmouth Hitchcock Health. Briana earned her Bachelor of Science in nursing and Master of Science in nursing with a focus on evidence-based nursing from the University of New Hampshire in 2012 and 2013. She is also a graduate of the LEND (Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and other Related Disabilities) program through the Geisel School of Medicine and the University of New Hampshire.
The Fellowship allowed me to finally see myself, and other nurses, as leaders and changemakers in healthcare. The only way forward is through nurses. It helped me find my voice and my purpose.
Briana’s J&J Nursing Innovation Fellow Journey
As a Fellow, Briana pioneered bringing the Clinical Nurse Leader role into the home health and hospice field, supporting the lateral integration of care for rural areas in VT and NH. As a CNL herself, she recognized that nurses with this certification were perfectly poised to break healthcare system silos, reach out into communities and prevent hospitalizations through coordinated community- and home-based healthcare. Briana’s work in preventative home health spans the 140 rural towns and communities in both Vermont and New Hampshire within Dartmouth Hitchcock’s service area. She hopes her program can serve as a model for other home health and hospice agencies across the country, as proof that the return on investment for such programs is high and with the hope that Medicare will soon begin reimbursing CNL services.
For Briana, the Fellowship has driven her to find her voice as a leader and purpose in driving change within home health and hospice, promoting value-based purchasing and coordinated care. Community-based services and social support services play an integral role in the success of programs like Brianna’s, so she hopes to use her project’s success to advocate for their continued growth. She plans to translate this work into direct advocacy for legislation expanding community and social support and providing more holistic care for patients.
