NurseWeek: Mothers of invention: To improve patient care, nurses devise innovative products

Mothers of invention
To improve patient care, nurses devise innovative products

By Michelle Paolucci
August 2, 2000

Many nurses come up with ideas for products that could improve patient care. But the process – getting an idea patented, making a prototype and getting a product manufactured and marketed – is daunting for most.

Illustration: Artville


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For the sixth time in one day, Sharon Ragone, RN, a neonatal intensive care unit nurse, checks the bilirubin masks on premature babies at St. Mary’s Hospital in Apple Valley. The masks easily slip. If she neglects to check them, ultraviolet light used to treat the babies’ jaundice could damage their delicate eyes.

On her way home that night, Ragone picks up a few supplies in the emergency room.

The next day, she fits the babies with her creation, which she dubs the Bili-Bonnet. Hours pass. Every time she checks, the bonnets are snugly in place.

Days later, she still hasn’t had to readjust a mask.

She seeks financing for her invention, but cannot find companies to back her. In the end, she scrapes together $1,500 for Small Beginnings, a business by and for nurse inventors, so-named after the tiny start-up budget and the tender age of her patients.

Getting started
Many nurses come up with ideas for products that could improve patient care. But the process – getting an idea patented, making a prototype and getting a product manufactured and marketed – is daunting for most.

"I used to think, ‘If we could only change the product we have to use to be more appropriate for preemies,’ and now I take these ideas to my company and I just run with it," she said. "We need products that make babies’ stays shorter, better and more comfortable … and more cost-effective for the hospitals," Ragone said.

"Nurses can be instrumental to the process because they are right there seeing what the patient needs."

First off, Ragone said, a nurse should protect the idea.

"Before discussing your idea with anyone, you should make a detailed description, without measurements specified, and a sketch," she said. "Then, I would send it by certified letter to myself, and never open it.

"This could be used in a court of law as proof that it was your idea. Also, you must be careful to get a nondisclosure form – a waiver that says the person you are consulting with will not use your idea without compensating you – signed by a representative from the company you may want to work with," she said.

Another route
Other nurses have found ways to market their products without starting their own companies.

Chandice Covington, Ph.D., NP, RN, brought her idea for a nipple aspirator, a product to aid women doing breast self-exams, to a breast pump company that had gone out of business.

"The owner started another company just for my product," she said.

Covington came up with the idea while researching breast cancer at Wayne State University in Detroit. Then she turned to the university’s technology transfer department, where she had access to patent attorneys and a support staff to help with paperwork.

"Universities have departments just to support faculty with getting patents; they’ll provide access to patent attorneys and support staff that helps the inventor through the process from inception to getting the product to market," Covington said.

She suggested that nurses with product ideas buy a spiral-bound notebook, one from which pages can’t be torn, and have colleagues sign pages where descriptions are documented or sketches are made.

She also suggested attending conferences and carrying nondisclosure forms in case vendors are interested. "Then you can speak freely and don’t have to worry that your idea is unprotected."

Do your homework
Covington stressed that nurse inventors have to do their homework. "Most good ideas are thought about already. So, there may be a patent that exists already for a very similar device, but it just has never made it to market," she said.

Anyone with an idea can go to the nearest patent library, usually in a major metropolitan city, and the librarian will explain a patent search step by step.

"Or a nurse inventor could go to the Internet and use just about any search engine," Covington said. "If you didn’t have the time, you can opt to pay a service to do the patent search for you for between $500 and $1,000," she said.

Joan Engebreston, DrPH, RN, and Diane Wardell, Ph.D., RN, of the University of Texas-Houston Health Science Center, came up with ideas for products while doing research.

They invented the Wee Thumbie, a pacifier for preemies in the NICU, and partnered with a company called Small Medical Ventures to market their product.

"We went to our university’s intellectual property department when we first thought of our idea," Engebreston said. "We had met a lot of neonatal nurses who had been expressing that there was a great need in the NICU for pacifiers that would fit into the mouths of low-weight babies without gagging them," she said.

"After collaborating with a group of clinicians at the hospital and doing studies on babies sucking their thumbs in utero, we had a solid idea for a prototype, and that’s when we made the move to try and get our idea developed," Engebreston said.

"To influence care for the better is very satisfying. So, if a nurse has an idea that would make care better for the patient, then I would go for it. It’s a very fulfilling experience," Wardell said.