Montana State nursing college research to be featured in London’s Florence Nightingale Museum

BOZEMAN -The Mark and Robyn Jones College of Nursing at Montana State University is set to extend its international influence with novel research by professors on display in London.

The Florence Nightingale Museum's "Healing Spaces" exhibition will open Nov. 17 and run for one year. The museum, which hosts tens of thousands of visitors annually, was formerly the Nightingale Training School.

"It is a distinct honor for the work of MSU nursing to be featured in the Florence Nightingale Museum. This demonstrates the caliber of our professors, the work they are doing and our deep commitment to pursuing MSU's land-grant mission to Montana," said Sarah Shannon, dean of the nursing college. "The research done by the College of Nursing at MSU has real-world impacts; now these impacts will have an international stage and inspire nurse-led health care innovation worldwide."

MSU nursing professor Elizabeth Johnson's research will be a key feature of the upcoming exhibit focused on health care design.

Johnson researches the impacts of the built environment on health care, specifically in rural settings, and the use of data to support decision-making. She collaborates with MSU nursing professor Julie Ruff and architecture professor Jordan Zignego, among many other MSU faculty and outside partners.

Johnson's work has significant overlap with the fields of architecture and engineering, examining how different design choices in health care settings can impact patient outcomes. For example, the slick floor or flickering light in the exam room may subconsciously create an unwelcoming environment for a patient, she said.

The field of health care design in the nursing profession is emerging and not widely studied, Johnson said. She said MSU is a nationally recognized leader in this space, with the nursing college providing graduate-level health care design courses and nursing students competing in national health care design competitions. Johnson credits Montana's rural environment as an unexpected advantage for the research. That's because rural hospitals are smaller and are community minded at a local level, she said, whereas large urban hospitals may be less able to collaborate on new, experimental ideas.

The London exhibit will feature Johnson's design innovations. One recent project is virtual skylights for hospital rooms, specifically for rural areas where there is limited funding to modify existing structures. In collaboration with researchers from Texas A&M University, virtual skylights are mounted into the ceilings to provide patients with mimicked natural light cycles that support healthy circadian rhythm and hormone control, Johnson said. So far, the virtual skylights have been implemented at the Phillips County Hospital in Malta.

Another featured initiative will be "The Kind Room," where Johnson and her collaborators are working with children to design their own hospital rooms. They are soliciting direct input from kids as young as 5 about which colors, furniture and spatial layouts make them feel calm and safe when receiving care. The project is also being implemented in Malta and on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.

Beyond health care design, other MSU work will be showcased in photographs, including an invention called TrialWear. A wearable prototype device developed at MSU, the technology triggers an alert for clinical trial participants if they enter a medical facility, ensuring providers have full awareness of their medical history. To support the work, Eric Sproles, the director of the Geospatial Core Facility at MSU and an associate professor of Earth Sciences, and lead developer Erich Schreier created geofences, or virtual, location-based boundaries that trigger the alert, applying software typically used for tracking packages to a new use in modern medicine.

A large team photo of the group who has worked on this research highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the work, Johnson said, which includes architects, earth science, education, community engagement and engineers.

Other MSU projects to be recognized include professor Margaret Hammersla's work expanding cancer care access in partnership with Barrett Hospital, American Society of Clinical Oncology and Conquer Cancer in Dillon; and professor Laura Larsson and Twilla Yellow Horse's team in the Caring for Our Own Program, which focuses improving tribal health care delivery and engaging Indigenous students.

Johnson said it's exciting that MSU will be a focal point of the exhibit, and that school groups from the United Kingdom and nurses in the UK's National Health Service will be able to learn about the work happening at MSU's College of Nursing.

"We're taking all this knowledge, expertise and the highly collaborative nature that MSU encourages, and seeing how it can affect global change for the good," Johnson said. "It's very fulfilling that what we're doing here in Montana also can support children around the world. We're proud of our students for being agile thinkers, proud of our faculty for being strong collaborators across disciplines and proud of the communities that welcome us to test new ideas to improve the health care environment."

Johnson visited the Florence Nightingale Museum a decade ago and will return for the exhibit's grand opening.

Nightingale, who lived from 1820 to 1910, was a pioneer of modern nursing who advocated for sanitation reforms such as handwashing and proper waste disposal. She gained prominence during the Crimean War and saw solider mortality decrease with improved sanitation and other changes such as better air quality and access to natural light. Nightingale advocated for evidence-based decision-making that relied on data, which she used to back up the need for environmental changes to support healing and patient health.

"It feels like a kind of homecoming," Johnson said. "This particular museum is where Florence trained, and for Montana State and our lab to be featured in the same place where she walked the halls is a great honor."

Johnson also thanked Debbie Gregory, co-founder of the Nursing Institute for Healthcare Design, for her advocacy and support of MSU's work and for the nomination to be featured in the exhibit.

Dean Shannon added, "Our nurse scientists at MSU would make Florence Nightingale very proud of nurses' impact on today's health care environmental challenges."

For more information about the museum, visit florence-nightingale.co.uk/.