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This is Laura Dierda with the Becker's Healthcare
Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by
Michael Thorn, who is a nurse practitioner for
trauma, critical care, and general surgery as well
as the chair of the NP and PA
Innovation Committee at Mayo Clinic. Michael, it's a
pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
Thank you for having me. Now I'm really
looking forward to our discussion because I know
right now is such an interesting time in
health care, and certainly the NP and PA
roles are elevating and continue to evolve,
within the broader care team. So, you know,
I think this will be a great opportunity
to connect and learn more about what you're
doing at Mayo Clinic. But before we dive
into our discussion, can you tell me a
little bit more about yourself and your background?
Certainly. I I'm a Vermont,
native. I went to school in Bangor, Maine,
where I went to nursing school,
at Husson University. And then I had the
opportunity to go through
an internship at Mayo Clinic, where in 2010,
I was offered a job to work in
ENT and plastics to start my nursing career.
And then in 2014,
I then transitioned over into the advanced practice
roles, a nurse practitioner and where I'm at
right now in trauma critical care.
And I kinda wanna speak more to, like,
how my innovation journey started.
In 2016,
my colleague and I, Rob Hill,
we submitted an application to our Surgical Innovation
Accelerator program, and we added this idea to
develop this surgical drain stripping device.
And this is really where I started to
have this potential with pursuing more innovation
and seeing how clinicians can be more
active in the actual process of innovating.
And since that time,
we've been able to secure
patent protection for our device, but then go
through several pitch competitions where we've secured funding.
And, currently, we're in the process
of, going through clinical trials and working on
commercialization.
But like I said, this is the initial
process where I started to become
more and more innovative and being
more supportive for others to be innovative
within practice.
And since then, I've been more involved with
working with industry partners
through know how agreements,
but also helping other clinicians with industry involvement.
And throughout this journey, I've been able to
appreciate more and more that there's an immense
potential for health care professionals, such as advanced
practice providers,
to be innovative within practice.
That's really cool to hear and, you know,
inspiring to think about how you evolved from,
you know, kind of your practitioner
in the work that you were doing on
the ground level to thinking about innovation, how
you can make patient care even better than
actually putting that into action.
And I love the point you made too
about being able to support others and being
more innovative, because, certainly, it is,
not easy to do sometimes and and certainly
can be helped if you've got others who
are cheering you along the way. Now from
your perspective, I know innovation is important to
health care today, but it's not always easy.
So what roadblocks do NPs face to innovation?
That's an excellent question. So
as advanced practice providers, we've seen significant roadblocks,
and this is not just within one institution,
but across all institutions.
The first being that there's these un uncoordinated
efforts. So we all know that health care
innovation is very sporadic and siloed and very
slow.
And MPs might develop great ideas, but without
a coordinated system to help them capture, develop,
or implement these ideas,
they often just remain just that, just ideas.
So there needs to be a more streamlined
approach
from concept to implementation.
And secondly,
there's the knowledge gaps.
While MPs are experts in patient care and
they're at the frontline with patients, they often
lack a lot of the knowledge that
is crucial be to be innovative within practice,
such as design thinking,
understanding end user involvement and discovery,
and just learning the actual business process of
being innovative.
So there's definitely this knowledge gap that's difficult
for MPs and PAs to be innovative.
And thirdly, I would say there's a cultural
resistance.
MPs and PAs might
face skepticism or push back with their new
ideas because they're kinda challenging the status quo
as we know with all innovation.
And advanced practice providers are not typically seen
as innovators, but they're more and more just
seen as the end users of the innovative
output from others within health care.
Well, that's really fascinating to hear and definitely
appreciate how the their additional context,
you know, in some of those roadblocks because
I can imagine,
there are a lot of NPs and PAs
out there who, you know, have the ability
to be innovative and really make a difference
within the care team and care process. But,
you know, having some of those,
different cultural challenges as well as,
not having necessarily the right push in the
right direction,
you know, might leave a lot on the
table.
So I understand at Mayo, you've developed a
unique committee based approach to boost innovation and
engagement. Could you tell me about that? What
did you do initially, and what were the
results?
Certainly.
So
throughout my 1st few years being innovate being
in the innovation ecosystem, I started realizing that
why are there not more MPs and PAs
being innovative within practice. And
this actually kinda started out with
a clinical innovation questionnaire I put together called
the CIQ.
And
within this questionnaire, there was about 20 questions,
which I sent out to all the, nurse
practitioners and physician assistants
within the department of surgery.
And that CIQ,
that questionnaire,
was really eye opening. What we found was
that
80% were calling for more resources to be
supportive with potential efforts and innovation.
There's about 63%
did ex, express desire,
for being involved in education and training based
off of creativity and innovation,
topics.
But more more interestingly was that 70% of
the respondents on that survey showed that they're
willing to be participants in a committee specifically
for MPs and PAs.
So I went to the Department of Surgery
Leadership
who then gave us a 100% support to
move forward with our efforts to develop a
innovation committee.
And this leadership was really,
instrumental in our our success because it gave
us the road map and the institutional support
to move forward.
And as we established the MDPA
Innovation Committee,
we decided to you know, we wanted to
have a very diverse group of
MPs and PAs from different surgical subspecialties.
So this made up about 8,
individuals
going forward.
And what we did within this committee was
we had several key initiatives.
We wanted to provide ongoing monthly meetings with
educational sessions. So what that entailed was
within our 60 minute,
committee meeting on a monthly basis, we did
provide 30 minute educational sessions for
not just committee members, but we also included
those who were not on the committee to
come and listen at the endpoint of our
committee
meetings.
And this educational session on a monthly basis
would include
how to secure your intellectual property, how to
be involved with prototyping,
how to pitch your idea and, secure
stakeholder buy in going forward.
And then secondly, we also put together a
monthly newsletter, which allowed us to disseminate a
lot of the information that we wanted to
share with a lot of those within our
department.
And this included
updates on funding opportunities,
networking events, educational sessions, but also,
project achievements from what MPs and PAs were
working on. Then,
thirdly, I put together in, an internal website,
essentially a central hub,
for for all the resources that could help
guide MPs and PAs with innovation. This included
a wide array of different tools, guidelines,
podcasts,
educational resources,
but also a way to, submit
a request
for assistance with their innovative idea.
And then on my own time, I would,
on a monthly basis, provide ongoing open office
hours where
I would allocate 3 to 4 days a
month where I would allow MPs and PAs
to schedule a meeting with me, and I
would help them go through the process of
what they were working on with their idea
and get them to fruition and get them
to the next step steps in their process.
What we found was these results were quite
remarkable from the,
studies that we did.
Our primary measure of success with this committee,
was to
determine
how well it improved an MP or PA's
ability to,
engage in innovation. And this was measured by
our annual all staff survey.
In 2022,
we found that 66%
of MPs and PAs within our department
felt encouraged to innovate. And then after implementing
this committee with all the initiatives that we
had,
this number had jumped to 82%,
which was a significant increase over 15 points.
But the impact from this was not just
a statistical increase. It was we found that
there was a lot of tangible outcomes that
came from this committee. And this included
structuring of new know how agreements,
multiple people had,
developed, medical prototypes,
and, working with industry through other routes as
well too. So we found that, you know,
MPs and PAs were engaging more and more
in the innovation process based off of this
committee.
And going forward, we found that, also, is
that 80% of the
participants in our survey
found that, being involved
in innovation processes would actually positively
impact their job satisfaction,
but also their work life balance,
which is this finding is quite significant
because it because it suggests that innovation
efforts could potentially
improve staff retention, but also job satisfaction.
That's amazing to hear. You know? And and
certainly, what a great idea to have the
committee be put together and and be able
to support the different,
clinicians at different levels so that they can
really realize their visions and dreams and be
pushed into a space where they can be
more creative and innovative thinking. And you're right.
I mean, the results speak for themselves to
really see how,
you know, that engagement,
can make a big difference,
is just really cool. Now, you know, from
your perspective, I'm wondering if you could talk
a little bit about some of the lessons
that you've learned since establishing the committee.
Certainly.
So one was that we found that, you
know, NPs and PAs
really are an untapped potential for innovation within
health care.
Our professions, we can come to the table
with unique insights
just based off our daily patient interactions, but
also,
really understanding the boots on the ground, what
needs to work to make health care better.
We also found that there is a high
importance when it comes to education.
A lot of MPs and PAs
and as well as nurses do not receive
a lot of this
entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship,
innovation education. And what I found was there's
a lot of, medical programs that are starting
to integrate a lot of that education into
their actual medical training.
And it's kind of it it's a pitfall
when it comes to
advanced practice providers,
education base.
So with our ongoing monthly education sessions, we're
trying to, you know, fill that gap where
they don't actually get that education starting off
in their career.
But now we're gonna try to provide that
ongoing.
And then we also find that time and
resources are critical. And we know
all hospitals are short staffed, and we're kinda
running at higher acuity and census levels.
And we understand that we can't always get
allocated time and resources. But, you know, we've
learned that if we could have a little
bit of dedicated time and some resources, we
could have a lot more impactful outcomes from
our efforts within the innovation ecosystem.
Because a lot of this is all being
done just on everybody's time,
1 point o kinda FTE approach.
Everybody's doing it on their own time, and
we're being able to show that you can
still have a considerable amount of outcomes
without actually having dedicated time, but what could
it be if you actually gave everybody a
little bit more time?
And then also learning is that, you know,
leadership support is vital. You know, the support
from our department
has been crucial in our success, and
we we applaud and thank them, for providing
us with the ongoing support.
So as we know with all innovation processes,
we really need to have key stakeholders when
it comes to, you know, going through with
a project or an idea. And with this
committee, we've had that vital support.
And, lastly, I'd like to speak to, you
know, the innovation culture is
really self reinforcing. And perhaps more important importantly,
we just need to learn that once you
started to foster a culture of innovation, it
tends to snowball. And, you know, as MPs
and PAs,
we see our colleagues to see succeeding and,
you know, bringing ideas to life. So it
inspires them to do the same. So creating
this, you know, virtuous cycle of innovation is
really crucial going forward. We've seen that through
our efforts with this committee.
That's really helpful to understand and, you know,
really,
see the evolution of how you worked within
the committee
creating it and then, you know, learned, got
feedback, and continued to, I can imagine, iterate
and improve on the process.
Now before we wrap up here, I'm wondering,
how will you keep up momentum? What are
you going to do to make sure that
as time goes on, the energy and passion
doesn't wane from,
the innovation committee?
Certainly.
I think the first thing we need to
focus on to kinda keep momentum with this
is really continuing to provide ongoing education and
skill development
within the committee, but also disseminating that across
to others.
You know, we're we're committed to ongoing education
through our monthly sessions, and I'm finding more
and more topics to bring to the table.
And, you know, most recently, we've we've had
conversations with our office of engineering on how
to submit an idea for a prototype.
I've done a couple talks on how to
keep an idea notebook ongoing and just keeping
that at hand. So
providing those little educational sessions through, like, a
microlearning approach is very important.
Otherwise, on top of that, we would, you
know, look at expanding our reach. So we're
looking to expand our community's influence beyond just
our current scope and then the department of
surgery, and we're hoping to expand it to
a institutional level outside of our department.
And then thirdly is the the mentorship program
that we're trying to put together. We're in
the process of developing this mentorship program
to help connect experienced
innovators with those who are kinda newcomers to
the innovation ecosystem
to help kind of provide some nurturing,
and guidance through this process.
Fourthly is working on strengthening our industry partnerships.
You know, we're we're actively working on building
more and more stronger relationships
with industry
and, multiple different start ups. And this not
only includes, you know, potential pathways for commercialization,
but also providing ongoing strategic support for us
going forward.
And we really also need to continue
looking at leadership engagement.
We're maintaining strong connections within our department, but
now we're looking at more of our institutional
level as well too.
And, you know, the ongoing engagement and
conversations will really help us strengthen our committee
and hopefully expand it further.
And then lastly is, you know, I think
it's very important to keep a way to
keep the momentum going is really linking innovation
to career development. And this hasn't been something
that's been really talked about in the in
the past, and I'm hoping we can kinda
continue this forward, is that
looking at ways to more formally recognize that
innovation activities can be
a way of career development and advancing your
career with as a MP and PA.
And this will need to be more and
more incorporated into our professional development programs as
we go forward as, you know, leadership programs
and all are great, but really focusing on
innovation as a possible gateway to professional growth
going forward.
That's amazing to hear. Michael, thank you so
much for joining us on the podcast today.
This has been such an inspiring conversation, and
I look forward to connecting with you again
soon. Thank you. It was great. Thank you.