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Nursing staff bring distinct experience to healthcare innovation: firsthand experience with patient care, clinical workflows and the day-to-day realities of nursing practice. Mayo Clinic nursing staff recently gathered to bring together those perspectives and answer a question that extends beyond any one role or care setting: What could the future of nursing look like, and what will it take to get there?
More than 110 nursing staff representing different roles, specialties and care settings across Mayo Clinic came together at Nursing Nexus, an annual Mayo Clinic forum that brings staff together to identify nursing practice challenges and explore potential solutions for nursing, by nursing.
From navigating change to shaping it
"Nursing staff are uniquely positioned to drive solutions to healthcare challenges. They're closest to the patient, and they understand that collaboration is essential to every part of our work," says Ryannon Frederick, chief nursing officer of Mayo Clinic.
At the event, staff explored how to navigate and adapt to change, heard from fellow nursing innovators turning frontline ideas into real-world solutions, and considered how emerging technologies could reshape care delivery.
Across roles and care settings, staff identified challenges they see in their work, generated more than 250 potential solutions, and worked together to evaluate and prioritize them.
While teams approached the work from different perspectives, common needs emerged during ideation sessions. Their ideas centered on several key areas:
- Providing patients with more personalized, accessible information about their care.
- Strengthening continuity throughout the patient's care journey.
- Optimizing staffing and workflows.
- Reducing documentation burden for staff.
- Embedding real-time clinical decision support and guidance in workflows.
Teams advanced 16 recommendations for further consideration. Consistent with past years, those recommendations will help inform upcoming Mayo Clinic Department of Nursing strategic planning discussions, bringing staff expertise and firsthand experience into conversations about the future.
Moving ideas forward
For nursing staff, producing ideas is only one part of shaping what comes next.
The Department of Nursing AI Agent Competition, which drew more than 450 staff proposals earlier this year, provided a pathway for selected ideas to advance into testing and development for potential broader use. At Nursing Nexus, finalists presented solutions they developed in response to challenges they encountered in their work. One of the solutions aims to help complete leave and disability paperwork faster, reducing administrative work for care teams and potentially shortening waits for patients who need forms and approvals.
"When nursing staff bring a desire to be part of the solution and raise their hands because they want to make things better, it's our responsibility to meet them with the connections, resources and pathways that can help move their ideas forward," says Frederick.
Together, these efforts offer tangible examples of what the future of healthcare could look like when those closest to the work take an active role in building it.
Learn more about nursing at Mayo Clinic.
