Educating the next generation of nurses to be innovators and change agents.

With over 4 million nurses in the United States and an ever changing health care environment, undergraduate nursing faculty must consider proactively educating students on essential principles of innovation within the core curriculum. New nurses must be prepared to identify and facilitate innovations to enhance patient and populations outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to describe an approach to prepare the next generation of registered nurses to be innovators and change agents through a Health Care Innovation Program within an undergraduate nursing program.