The Nurse Inventor: A Leg Lift Medical Device and The Process of Bringing this Idea to Reality

The root of developing any invention is determining a need, and if fulfilling that need would benefit a selected population. While practicing bedside lower extremity wound care as a CWOCN, CFCN in a university hospital it became obvious there was an unmet need in the challenge of maintaining an aseptic/sterile environment. Thus, an idea for a procedural leg lift medical device was formed. This would not only meet the need for controlling the environment, but would also benefit the patient by stabilizing the extremity, the nurse by preventing lower back injury, and the facility by decreasing the man power needed to perform wound care. A respected general surgeon, the co-inventor, further developed the leg lift device for use in other procedural areas. Through Divine Intervention and attending a nursing research lecture offered by the commercialization department, the idea of a leg lift device came to fruition. Many designs of the leg lift device were drawn and described by the inventors which informed a patent search that was completed by the commercialization office. The results of the search, drawings and description were then used to prepare and file a patent application. An engineering design firm developed three prototypes for the University.  For marketing purposes, four short videos exhibiting the ease of use and purpose of the prototypes were created.  The device was successfully licensed to a company with this invention as its foundation product.   With more than 3 million American’s suffering from lower extremity ulcers and over 80,000 amputations performed annually just on those patients with diabetes, it is our hope that the leg lift device will help decrease the rate of lower extremity infections. This invention will fulfill the needs of the patient, the caregiver, and the hospital in managing an aseptic/sterile environment in the performance of wound care.