Today the American Nurses Association (ANA) and the American Nurses Foundation (the Foundation) announced the winners of the 2021 ANA Innovation Awards powered by BD (Becton, Dickinson, and Company), a leading global medical technology company.
The ANA Innovation Awards highlight, recognize, and celebrate exemplary nurse-led innovation that improves patient safety and health outcomes. The individual nurse and nurse-led team award recipients will receive monetary prizes of $25,000 and $50,000, respectively. These funds will provide support in translational research, development, prototyping, production, testing, and in the implementation of their products over the next year.
Winner of the Individual Nurse Award:
Rebecca Cherney, RN
Rebecca Cherney, a staff nurse at a large tertiary hospital, developed TrachTrail™. It’s the first comprehensive, standardized adult tracheostomy care education program of its kind, focusing on combined nurse, patient, and caregiver training with emphasis on empathy for the patient and their families. TrachTrail™ provides user-friendly multimedia content, emphasizing patient-centeredness and builds upon multi-disciplinary collaboration to ensure quality of life with a tracheostomy at home. The need for adult tracheostomies – a medical procedure that involves placing a tube into a person’s windpipe to allow air to enter the lungs – has increased significantly due to COVID-19 by 15-20%. There were few standardized training programs available for adults in the self-care of tracheostomies before discharge, leaving nurses unable to effectively instruct patients and caregivers in the skills needed to care for their tracheostomy at-home. TrachTrail™ includes five 2-3-minute educational videos, an interactive discharge timeline, a skills education checklist, and an at-home workbook for patients and caregivers. Since the debut of TrachTrail™ on a progressive care unit in 2017, the educational program has seen a dramatic decrease in length of hospital stays from an average of 64.8 days to an average of 16.6 days, yielding higher patient and caregiver satisfaction. A wider hospital implementation is planned for 2021-2022.
Winner of the Nurse-led Team Award:
Brighid Gannon, DNP, PMHNP-BC and Pritma Dhillon-Chattha, DNP, MHA, RN
Lavender is an online psychiatry and therapy office founded, led, funded, and operated by Drs. Brighid Gannon and Pritma Dhillon-Chattha. Lavender was launched in May 2020 to provide patients with modern, accessible, and affordable mental health care during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their model of psychiatry care is solely delivered by board certified psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners who offer both medication management and mental health therapy in one session. This approach is not only cost effective and time-saving for the patient, but also is proven to be 60% more effective. Mental health care services are priced at 30% below market and insurance is accepted. Since its launch, Lavender bookings have doubled every month and high rates of monthly growth continue Lavender is currently available in New York state, with plans to expand services throughout the country.
“A resounding congratulations to the 2021 ANA Innovation Award winners. They represent the driving spirit of the nursing profession to lead significant initiatives across health care, as savvy business professionals, and innovators,” said ANA Vice President of Nursing Innovation Oriana Beaudet, DNP, RN PHN. “This is an extremely difficult moment in history. For almost a year, nurses have been facing a fierce pandemic, which has presented new obstacles for health care delivery and exposed stark disparities. I am especially proud of Rebecca, Brighid, and Pritma because they embody the excellence our profession strives for daily. All three winners have led trailblazing work that has helped to address the emerging challenges generated by COVID-19 and their innovations will continue to improve the human experience and quality of life long after this pandemic is over,” said Dr. Beaudet.
“BD is proud to continue our support of nurse-led innovation, and we congratulate the 2021 winners of the ANA Innovation Awards,” said BD Strategic Customer Vice President Rachelle Landry, BSN, MBA, RN. “Support for innovation continues to be essential to nursing practice excellence. Nursing innovation drives advancements in patient care delivery needs and overall health care transformation,” said Landry.
ANA supports work to advance innovation to the forefront of nursing and is committed to creating a culture of nurse-led innovation in health care. BD also values nurse-centered innovation, devoting more than a century of experience to developing products and processes that transform the health care profession, including safer, smarter, and simpler technologies to address the challenges that nurses face.
The award winners will have one year to further develop their innovation and will share their outcomes and findings in 2022. The ANA Innovation Awards are supported by BD’s generous contributions.