Taking Us There

Abstract

Our Creative Nursing 2013 exploration of innovating began in Issue #1 by facing the future-how to see it in new paradigms and talk about it with a new vocabulary. Issue #2 was about our drive to create, and the cognitive processes that can take us to new places. This issue celebrates manifestations of that creativity- innovative programs that are already taking us there, and scholarly concepts that show us the way.Daniel Pesut, our guest editor for this issue, is a nursing scholar and educator who believes strongly that creativity can and must be taught in higher education of health care professionals and in organizations. His research revealed that, "through focused attention to self-monitoring, self-evaluation, and self-reinforcement, nurses can self-regulate creative thought." From the literature, he presents models of creative thinking along with "mental locks" that serve as barriers, principles of directed creativity for quality improvement efforts, best practices for leading innovation in organizations, and self-assessment tools. He advocates for viewing conflict through a lens of the complementary nature of phenomena: "Complemen- tary pairs are dynamic, and reconciling them means harmonizing and bringing together that which has previously been considered incommensurate." Dr. Pesut also reviews The Innovation Equation: Building Creativity and Risk-Taking in Your Organization by Jacqueline Byrd and Paul Lockwood Brown, which offers a model for accelerating innovative capacity.One of the most groundbreaking programs we have ever presented in Creative Nursing is Buurtzorg ("neighborhood care" in the Dutch language), a model of community care developed in the Netherlands and now being replicated internationally. A product of design thinking, Buurtzorg is a nurse-led, nurse- run organization of self-managed teams that provide home care to patients in their neighborhoods; the model is based on principles of trust, professionalism, creativity, simplicity, and collaboration. As nursing professor Karen Monsen and Buurtzorg founder Jos de Blok explain, "The organization assumes that employees will do well and can be trusted." This strong support for autonomous nursing practice is exemplified by Buurtzorg's motto: "How do you manage professionals? You don't!"Nurses who want to be innovators within the context of their health care organizations are encouraged to embrace the concept of intrapreneurship. Nurse consultant Dori Taylor Sullivan's article review on this important topic points out that the skill sets that will advance "human factors" innovation in health care (as distinct from technology-driven innovation) have their foundation in entrepre- neurial and intrapreneurial values and expertise.In another realm of recent innovation, health care consultant ChrysMarie Suby addresses the benefits of social media in health care, including the educational value of blogs, wikis, and videoconferencing, and some Boston hospitals' use of Facebook to communicate with patients, families, staff, and the public following the recent tragedy there. She also discusses the consequences of inappropriate use of social media, including risks to patient privacy and professional reputations and the lost productivity and threats to safety inherent in "presenteeism."Recognizing the developmental nature of creative thought processes in the journey from novice to expert, nursing professor Ruth Kuiper offers an innovative model, tools, and strategies for integrating clinical reasoning into nursing curricula, with a goal of students' achieving a novice level of competence in solving patient problems upon graduation and beginning practice. …