Significant healthcare innovations are often developed in response to issues encountered by providers, including nurses. When it became evident there was a way to provide more efficient care to some of the smallest, most fragile patients – babies in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) – Erin Hoch, RN, BSN, was determined to bring her innovative idea to life. Working at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital in Loma Linda, Calif., Erin’s idea has helped to improve the feeding process for these newborn patients.

Erin had a passion for helping others from an early age, and after graduating nursing school and spending seven-and-a-half years in the pediatric intermediate intensive care unit (ICU), she followed her passion to the NICU. As she worked with the babies, she began to see inefficiencies in the feeding process, which was time-consuming and costly because it required so much equipment and often wasted resources, including the breastmilk.

Using her insights, Erin developed an innovative process that removed the in-between steps during the feeding process by allowing bottles to be converted into a container that provides the food for an infant’s nasogastric (NG) tube. Instead of the lengthy process of using a syringe to take the leftover milk from bottles and hooking up the syringe to a machine that then pumps milk to the NG tube, Erin streamlined the process, making care more efficient for nurses and more comfortable for infants and their families.

We recently spoke with Erin to learn more about the inspiration behind her innovative idea and her advice for aspiring nurse innovators.