For more than 125 years, Johnson & Johnson has been proud to advocate for, elevate, and empower the nursing profession, because for healthcare to work, it takes nurses.
Nurses are essential to connecting communities to care. With innovative mindsets, invaluable insights, and hands-on experience, they are uniquely positioned to transform the care delivery landscape, improving access to care and moving healthcare forward.
This National Nurses Month, Johnson & Johnson is celebrating the immeasurable impact of nurse innovation and sharing opportunities for individuals, teams, and health systems to power up nurse-led transformation so the profession and patients can thrive.
‘Caring with Courage’
This year, we are proud to share ‘Caring with Courage,’ three films produced for Johnson & Johnson by BBC StoryWorks Commercial Productions. In the films, inspiring nurse innovators and participants in J&J’s nurse innovation programming highlight the transformative impact that nurse innovators are having on healthcare systems globally. Through education, technology, and leadership, nurses are reimagining care delivery to improve patient outcomes and enhance the overall healthcare experience.
Throughout the films, you'll meet three teams of extraordinary nurse innovators, each working to improve healthcare in meaningful ways:
Improving care for medically fragile children
The team at Blythedale Children’s Hospital participated in the Johnson & Johnson Nurse Innovation Fellowship, powered by Penn Nursing and the Wharton School. This groundbreaking, one-year program is designed to support nurse leaders in driving transformation within healthcare organizations. Led by Chief Nursing Officer Jill Wegener, RN, MSN, and Nursing Director of the Pediatric, Adolescent & Traumatic Brain Injury Unit Kara Dyer-Dombroski, RN, MSN, the Blythedale team focused on improving the quality of care for medically fragile children transitioning from hospital to home. Their work is focused on helping to better support and empower parents and caregivers to care for their children using innovative educational tools, including a video library and real-time communication with care teams. The fellowship provided the Blythedale team with the education and mentorship needed to conceive and help develop their solution and make a lasting impact.
Integrating virtual nursing and wearable vital sign monitors
The Inova Health System nursing team participated in the Transforming Healthcare through Innovative Nurse-Led Care Delivery Learning and Action Network, a collaboration with Johnson & Johnson Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). Through this program, the team tested small pilot projects focused on innovative technology to improve staff efficiency and patient care. One standout innovation is the integration of virtual nursing and wearable vital sign monitors, which streamline care, provide support for newer nurses, enhance the patient experience and improve the working environment by ensuring nurses can spend more time with their patients. At the conclusion of the pilot, nurses reported more time for patient care, education and family updates, timeliness of care, positive patient feedback, smoother medication administration and discharges, and an improvement of timely completion of their work, including leaving work on time.
Addressing critical gaps in maternal care in Ghana
The Ghanaian-Diaspora Nursing Alliance is another powerful example of nurse-led innovation. As the 2024 NurseHack4Health Pitch-A-Thon awardee, the team led by Dr. Yvonne Commodore-Mensah and inspired by the experiences of Gifty Boateng, MSN, RN, CPAN, received coaching and mentorship, as well as grant funding to bring their MAMA-CVD (Midwife-Assisted Monitoring and Assessment of CardioVascular Disease) model to life. The initiative seeks to improve maternal health outcomes in Ghana through AI-assisted cardiac screenings, empowering midwives to detect cardiovascular disease in pregnant women and better connecting communities to care by addressing a critical gap in maternal healthcare. This innovative approach has the potential to save lives and transform healthcare delivery for mothers and babies.
NurseHack4Health is organized in collaboration with SONSIEL – Society of Nurse Scientists, Innovators, Entrepreneurs, & Leaders, Johnson & Johnson, and Microsoft, and sponsored by Johnson & Johnson Foundation. Interested in advancing your own healthcare solution? Join us on May 20 at 12pm ET, for an info session on the all new 2025 NurseHack4Health Pitch-A-Thon: Take it Apart | Fix it | Build it Better. Open globally and featuring tracks for health system teams, nursing organizations and nurse-founded startups. Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to bring your innovations to life! You can register for the info session here.
How to use the toolkit for your team
To help nursing teams engage with the ‘Caring with Courage’ series and turn these powerful stories into action, Johnson & Johnson has created a new Nurse Innovation Toolkit for health system teams. This resource is designed to spark conversations, inspire change, and foster a culture of innovation within your health system.
The toolkit includes:
- The three films, available for team viewing, so everyone can witness firsthand the impact of nurse-led innovation.
- A discussion guide to help teams reflect on the lessons from the films and explore how they can implement similar innovations in their own practices.
- Reflection activity that encourages critical thinking and problem-solving, helping nursing teams identify areas where they can make a difference.
- A guide to key nurse innovation opportunities supported by Johnson & Johnson, like the Nurse Innovation Fellowship and NurseHack4Health.
By using the toolkit, nursing teams can better understand the power of innovation in their own practice and begin to see how small changes can lead to transformative improvements in patient care and workplace culture.
Celebrating and expanding the impact of nurse-led innovation
As the films highlight, nurses have the creativity, expertise, and passion to drive meaningful change and transform the way care is delivered. This National Nurses Month is an opportunity to celebrate their efforts, but it’s also a call to action.
We encourage all nurses to explore the ‘Caring with Courage’ series and use these stories as inspiration to spark innovation within their own teams. Whether through technology, education, or new care delivery models, and with resources and support, nurses have the power to improve patient outcomes and create a more efficient, compassionate healthcare system.
We invite you to access the ‘Caring with Courage’ film series and explore the full toolkit. Together, we can continue to inspire and implement nurse-led innovations that elevate the profession, transform healthcare, and ultimately, help patients thrive.
