Did You Know? 10 Healthcare Inventions By Nurses

Every code blue used to mean nurses storing emergency drugs in their scrub pockets and staff sprinting to find the defibrillator. That chaos is what nurse Anita Dorr saw, and it is why she built the crash cart. None of the nurses below set out to make history. They saw a problem on their unit and solved it. Here are 10 inventions that changed standards of care and are still in use today.

1947 | Disposable Liners for Baby Bottles

Old baby bottles slowed the milk and made babies swallow air, which caused stomach upset and exhaustion. Adda M. Allen created a sealed disposable plastic liner that let the air out before feeding. The sides collapsed as the baby drank, cutting the work of feeding and easing the symptoms.

1952 | Feeding Tubes

After World War II, the U.S. Army wanted a device to help veterans with paralysis or amputated arms feed themselves. A physician told Bessie Blount Griffin that if she really wanted to help, she would find a way. She spent 10 months in her kitchen building a tube that let soldiers control their own feeding by biting down on a spoon-shaped end. The Army refused to manufacture it, so she had it made in Canada. When the Veterans Administration called it impractical, she gave the design to the French government free of charge, wanting the focus on the invention rather than herself.

1954 | Ostomy Bags

People with ostomies used to avoid going out, afraid of smell and leaks. When nurse Elise Sørensen's sister Thora got an ostomy at 32, Sørensen built a pouch that sealed against the skin and let nothing in or out. Several manufacturers passed on it until a fellow nurse, Johanne Louis-Hansen, convinced her husband, a plastics manufacturer, to produce them. Ostomy bags have been the standard of care since.

1958 | Neonatal Phototherapy

Babies once needed blood transfusions for jaundice. Sister Jean Ward noticed the premature infants she walked around the hospital courtyard looked visibly better afterward. A physician she worked with, Dr. Dobbs, then saw that skin shielded by a blanket looked more yellow than skin exposed to sunlight. Phototherapy is now the most common treatment for neonatal jaundice.

1964 | Snugli Baby Carrier

Before Peace Corps nurse Ann Moore, American mothers carried babies in rigid plastic seats with no warmth or contact. In Togo, Moore saw mothers carry their babies close, and after her daughter was born she and her own mother sewed a pouch so she could carry her baby on her back. Word spread from strangers asking about it until a 1976 consumer report named it the carrier to own.

1968 | Crash Cart

Code blues once meant staff scrambling for needles, IV kits, drugs, and the defibrillator. Anita Dorr built the first crisis cart in her basement, organizing supplies in drawers with the most urgent items at the top. She had her husband paint it red.

1983 | The Wong-Baker FACES Pain Rating Scale

Young children cannot describe pain as throbbing or pounding, and they struggle to rank it by number, but they understand a little, a lot, or none at all. Pediatric nurse consultant Donna Wong knew this and worked with child life specialist Connie Baker to build a scale children could use. They researched pain assessment, asked children to weigh in on the facial expressions, and tested it on grade-school kids. It is now widely used for patients age 3 and older.

1990 | Bili Bonnet

Phototherapy worked, but premature babies' eyes could not tolerate the light, and for nearly 30 years staff improvised eye protection from whatever they had. After caring for these infants in the NICU, Sharon Rogue created the Bili Bonnet, a mask secured with a mesh bonnet. It launched her company, Small Beginnings.

2003 | Color-Coded IV Lines

Taping clear IV lines to tell them apart works until an emergency, when the tape snags on bed rails and you cannot find the right line fast. Labor and delivery nurse Teri Barton-Salinas designed color-coded lines to cut medication errors. She and her sister, fellow nurse Gail Barton-Hay, brought ColorSafe IV lines to a patent attorney and received a patent in 2003.

2013 | GoGown

Overflowing trash cans of used gloves and gowns can spread the infections they are meant to prevent. Nurse entrepreneur Ginny Porowski created the GoGown, which lets a nurse remove gloves and gown and wrap them into a self-sealing panel. The panel can be built into any size or style of isolation gown.

You do not have to be Florence Nightingale to change a standard of care. These nurses spotted a problem and used their expertise to solve it, and in doing so set new standards for newborn jaundice, ostomy care, infection control, infant feeding, pain assessment, and cardiac arrest.