Nurses are uniquely positioned to develop solutions that have the potential to change human health, but sometimes due to time constraints, insufficient resources, and low levels of resiliency, nurses find themselves in environments where they don’t feel empowered to make their great ideas reality. Nurse leader Betty Jo Rocchio and her team at Mercy in Chesterfield, Missouri are committed to changing that.

Johnson & Johnson recently spoke with Betty Jo Rocchio, MS, BSN, CRNA, CENP, chief nursing optimization officer and former vice president of perioperative performance at Mercy, to learn more about how she and Mercy use data and analytics to create environments that support and empower nurses to bring their innovative solutions forward. Mercy, one of the top five large health systems in the nation according to IBM Watson Health, employs nearly 15,000 nurses and is making nurse-led innovation a priority by positioning nurses as care team leaders. Betty Jo hopes other health systems can learn from how they are championing nurse-led innovation to improve patient outcomes.