How to Effectively Disseminate Bottom-Up Developed Nursing Technological Innovations that Enhance Job Satisfaction? The Essential Role of Collaborative Makerspaces

This conceptual paper explores the dissemination challenges of bottom-up, co-created innovations developed in makerspaces, that address healthcare needs and enhancing nurses’ efficiency and job satisfaction. The Create4Care initiative, launched by nurses at a Dutch academic hospital, has become a national leader in this movement. A growing multidisciplinary network of makerspaces now propels the vision of Create4Care into a new phase, driven by intrinsic motivation to expand opportunities within the nursing profession. However, the dissemination of in-house innovations among hospitals faces challenges, like the Medical Device Regulation, not being a fabricant and the uncertain market opportunity. This paper takes an early step in identifying facilitators and barriers to the national dissemination of these innovations within an emerging Dutch collaboration of hospitals and universities of applied sciences, aiming to uncover strategies to overcome these obstacles.