In hospitals in North and South America, nurses are hacking medical equipment to improve patient care. Using off-the-shelf materials, they’ve created prescription bottles for the visually impaired, pipe systems to irrigate wounds of burn victims, low-cost feeding-tube holders, and other innovations.
Some of the most creative inventors work in wound care and critical care units, Young says. Jason Sheaffer of the University of Texas Medical Branch, for instance, erected a system of PVC pipes with holes in them over a burn unit tub where burn victims are treated. Running water through the pipes creates an irrigation system to aid in treatment. A wound vacuum kit, developed at the UnityPoint Health in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has a modular alarm to alert the care team when suction is lost. There’s also a 3-D-printed simulation model, created by Roxana Reyna, a nurse in Corpus Christi, Texas, that has a deep hole in it, representing a wound. Nurses can practice treating the wound on the model, instead of on a live, suffering patient …
