Oriana Beaudet, DNP RN FAAN, experienced her first day of nursing school on September 11, 2001. Sitting in a coffee shop before class, she watched the Twin Towers collapse, the world shifting in real time. “Everything we thought we knew tilted on its axis,” she recalls. When she finally walked into her lecture hall, the room was silent. A professor stepped forward and told the students, “This is why you’re becoming a nurse. This is why it’s so critically important you’re becoming a nurse.” Beaudet never looked back.

Now, Beaudet is at the helm of nursing innovation, serving as the Vice President of Innovation at the American Nurses Enterprise, the family of companies that comprise the American Nurses Association. Beaudet has spent years building the infrastructure to empower nurses as problem-solvers, disruptors, and designers of the future of healthcare. Read on to learn about her nursing journey, what the ANA is doing to support nursing innovation, and what resources are available to nurses. 

A one-way ticket to Alaska

Beaudet knew she wanted to go to college, as the first person in her family to pursue a college degree, she wanted to find the right path, and that meant living a little before choosing a major. She bought a one-way ticket to Alaska. “I did everything that was quintessentially Alaska,” she recalls. Amidst other adventures, she pursued her EMT certification at the University of Anchorage. Navigating a medical emergency during a wildland fire solidified her draw to healthcare. 

She eventually returned to Minnesota to continue with her Associate of Science in Nursing. Later, she went back to finish her four-year degree and, subsequently, her doctoral degree in Health Innovation and Leadership with a focus on design at the University of Minnesota. Beaudet’s experience was primarily in critical care, trauma, and emergency medicine at a level I trauma and public safety net hospital before transitioning into leadership and healthcare consulting.

Recognizing innovation 

Early in her career, working in emergency medicine and critical care, Beaudet developed a reputation for tackling problems. “Let’s get Ori in here,” her colleagues would say. She thrived in problem-solving spaces. “I’ve always worked to improve the environmental, process, and operational issues that impact clinical care to meet the needs of patients and families while addressing organizational challenges.”

In Beaudet’s doctoral program, she sought out people across the country who were innovating to address care needs, processes, and operations after the passage of the Affordable Care Act. “l consistently observed the innovative work being led by others helped to recognize my history of “problem solving” as what it was - innovation. I wondered how many other nurses were working to make systems better and innovating, while not seeing themselves as innovators either.”

This became the seed for her doctoral work. “Nurses often don’t recognize their own work as innovation. What’s considered groundbreaking in one setting might seem routine in another. “Innovation looks different by place,” she explains. “If you’re in a well-resourced hospital, cutting-edge technology might be a focus of innovation. But in spaces where resources are stretched thin, innovation may look like a new process or creative workflows to stretch limited resources.” She said, “Recognizing the continuum of innovation is a part of supporting nurse-led innovation.”

Nationally scaling nursing innovation 

“My doctoral work was focused on providing  innovation education for nurses, teaching them about design and engineering principles, including business models.” From nursing students to faculty, interprofessional team members, engineering students, including patients and families. Incredibly, the work kept growing across Minnesota’s largest healthcare system. 

Eventually, a role opened up at the American Nurses Enterprise for the VP of Innovation. “I knew it was my chance to change nursing and align my doctoral work and focus around innovation.” The challenge? To apply that and scale innovation to the national level. Beaudet has now been at the ANE for over five years, working to put infrastructure in place to support nursing innovation across the profession. 

Beaudet believes that innovation is a fundamental part of the profession’s identity. “It is important that the work of our profession is seen, validated, and understood for its breadth and impact across healthcare.”

Breaking barriers to nursing innovation

Beaudet believes nursing innovation lies in the courage to try, embrace failure, learn, grow, and try again. “We have to be okay with moving into unknown spaces, trying new things, doing new things, and improving things that need to be better,” she says. 

Yet, she acknowledges the inherent tension of nursing's past, present, and future within healthcare: It’s a system built on risk aversion because we want people and environments to be safe. “That being said, a lot of innovations are created for health care by people outside of health care who don’t fully understand the nuances of the systems they're designing for, and their solutions don’t actually fit the needs being navigated by clinicians and organizations.” 

This is why, she argues, nurse-led innovations are critical. Nursing innovations emerge from firsthand experience and directly address real patient needs and community challenges.

Beaudet also points to structural barriers in nursing innovation:

• Organizational culture: Are we creating space for nurses to lead and try new things?
• Lack of infrastructure: Support systems within institutions are needed to support nursing innovation.
• Entrepreneurial roadblocks: Nurses developing products or launching businesses have to learn these skills, just like other professionals who graduate without a business degree.

Wherever nurses are working, they are innovating, Beaudet says. “The solutions to healthcare’s biggest challenges don’t have to come from outside of nursing or healthcare. Some of the greatest answers already exist within our profession.”

The ANA innovation framework and resources

Although barriers to nursing innovation still exist, Beaudet and the American Nurses Enterprise are working to provide resources and frameworks to support nurse innovators wherever they are. 

Beaudet is committed to ensuring that nursing innovation is accessible, immediate, and deeply rooted in accessible information and innovation education. “Nurses, health care, and our patients don't have time to wait for much-needed solutions,” she explains. 

Some innovation resources the ANA is offering right now include:

• Articles in The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing. Articles are initially locked for six months, but then everything becomes open access. 
• The ANA Innovation Accelerator, launched in 2015. “Nurses need education about innovation and resources,” Oriana emphasizes. The accelerator is free to all nurses and provides structured support to develop new ideas and solutions.
• Innovation Resource Guides. These guides are designed to spark your curiosity about innovation and give you ideas on how to propel forward. 

Looking ahead, Oriana hints at upcoming projects. “We’re on the cusp of dropping some other work this year,” she says, encouraging nurses to stay up to date at Nursingworld.org/innovation.

Final Thoughts

Beaudet’s commitment to supporting nurse-led innovation is shaping the future of healthcare by ensuring that nurses have the resources, education, and infrastructure needed to thrive. “Nurses need support right now. Their work needs to be recognized, and their ideas need to be brought forward and amplified,” Beaudet emphasizes. As the ANE continues to expand its support, the ripple effect of innovation initiatives brings nurse-led solutions to the forefront of healthcare. 

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