Insights from Six Health Care Leaders

HealthLeaders spoke with smart and ambitious leaders making waves across the health care industry throughout the year. Here are insights from six leaders including Bonnie Clipper, DNP, RN, MA, MBA, CENP, FACHE, vice president of innovation at the American Nurses Association. Clipper said she fell in love with the concept of innovation after her experience in the three-year Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellows program.

“It is interesting to me that nurses don’t really understand what innovation is and don’t see themselves as innovators, yet they’re absolutely natural innovators,” she said. “The common response when I ask a room full of nurses—nurse leaders, outpatient nurses, inpatient nurses—’Is anyone here an innovator?’ a couple of hands go up,” she added. “Then I ask them, ‘Have you ever had to do a work-around to provide care for a patient?’ Well, then a lot more hands go up. Then I say, ‘Have you ever macgyvered anything to take care of a patient?’ By the end of that [question], every hand is up.”