Healthcare and health professions education is at the moment of a paradigm shift. The traditions of our institutions, such as in person courses and clinical experiences, are under tremendous strain. The COVID-19 pandemic, and sudden shift to almost fully online coursework, has provided a catalyst for new methods of nursing education for our profession. Crisis creates significant energy and can generate solutions to past barriers. Nursing education continues to be disrupted by the current events that require new thinking and innovation to create the nursing workforce of the future. In this article, we briefly discuss today’s challenges and the pandemic disruption and subsequent call for innovation. We offer evidence to support the path forward and examples of how to layer technology into innovative teaching and learning.

Within a large integrated health care system that includes local, regional, and national medical centers and offices, quality and patient safety teams, and research institutes, more than 58 000 nurses are employed, with the vast majority providing point-of-care service to patients and members. A small but increasingly important number of nurses are involved in quality improvement and research teams to improve patient care. Within this environment, a number of developments point to a growing need for nursing leadership in systems-level and delivery science policies and research. This article describes a partnership between clinical operations leaders and researchers (nurse scientists) to determine and utilize evidence-based practices to meet a system goal. The first objective of this article is to describe the barriers and potential solutions in combining practice, quality improvement, and research efforts across regions within a large integrated health care system. The second objective is to describe the uniqueness and importance of nurse leaders across interdisciplinary teams to simultaneously pursue research, quality improvement, and operational goals for the organization.

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Innovative individuals can be an annoying source of disruption in the workplace--always asking "why are we doing this?" and challenging long-held assumptions. Some individuals have the audacity to make changes believed to improve outcomes with or without support. Their actions and rationale for the actions are based on the belief that they are improving outcomes and adding value because current processes are no longer appropriate. This lack of regard for the status quo may be essential for organizational survival. These creative, innovative, and risky activities can and should be reframed and transformed from the lens of the innovator. Caring theory provides the interface for successful integration of innovative behaviors into the current healthcare culture. As we are students in the first Master of Healthcare Innovation program in the country, our experiences and challenges are shared from the framework of Caring for the Innovator. This article builds a case for enhancing the healthcare culture to recognize and value innovation and subsequently to support and care for the healthcare innovator. A brief discussion of the need for a new approach to innovation, an overview of the concepts of innovation and caring, and caring strategies to support innovation are presented.