Tending to a sleeping patient in a dark room is like navigating a cartoon-style obstacle course. You could experiment with all sorts of awkward maneuvers, contortions, perhaps even juggling. At the end of your experiments, you’d probably conclude that even if it is not impossible, working in the dark sets the scene for a host of mishaps and errors that can endanger your patients. So, most night shift nurses turn on the lights in a patient’s room an average of nine times an evening. Nurse of the Week Anthony Scarpone-Lambert, a 21-year-old nursing senior at the University of Pennsylvania, and Johnson & Johnson Nurse Innovation Fellow, Jennifferre Mancillas, RN, BSN, RNC-NIC decided to devise a way to help nurses work in the dark without disturbing patients’ slumber times.
Scarpone-Lambert and Mancillas, who met at the 2019 Johnson & Johnson nurse hackathon, surveyed 250 nurses and learned that 87% of them have trouble seeing during those night-time visits. “When nurses can’t see, we put our patients and ourselves at risk. This leads us to turn on intrusive overhead room lights that disrupt our patients,” Mancillas elaborated for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Such sudden awakenings deprive patients of much-needed rest, and can slow recovery. The innovative pair came up with a solution: the uNight Light, a wearable 2×1-inch LED light.
The nurse-entrepreneurs describe their invention as “The first-ever wearable LED light made specifically for frontline healthcare workers, allowing you to illuminate your workspace while decreasing patient sleep disturbances by 70%.” They add, “Inspired from the military, our device comes with three light settings [white, blue, and red] to optimize your ability to care for patients and remain alert. uNight Light’s brightness has been tested to give the perfect balance of illumination; keeping you safe and your patients asleep.”
Other nurses have essayed hacks of their own. As one NP related to the New York Times, “I had a co-worker who would wear those night lights that runners use on his forehead,” but the Forehead Night Nurse Light, alas, was not a runner, and lacked legs. The uNight Light, however, has some ardent supporters.
As for Scarpone-Lambert, his instructors, the J&J judges, and SONSIEL’s Rebecca Love, co-editor of The Rebel Nurse Handbook—which was awarded third place in the 2020 AJN Book of the Year Awards in Professional Issues—all seem to agree that the U Penn senior is going places. Bobbi Martin, president and CEO of the Global Nurse Foundation, said, “He just doesn’t quit, and never stops at ‘no’. He gets people excited.” Speaking to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Love, president of the Society of Nurse Scientists, Innovators, Entrepreneurs, and Leaders (SONSIEL), said Scarpone-Lambert stands out for “his drive, character, and passion. And Anthony operates at a different speed, thinking six steps ahead. He is one of the individuals with the potential to be a moonshot in the nursing profession, and I don’t say that lightly.”
Strong words to live up to, but Scarpone-Lambert seems poised to take off even before his pinning ceremony.
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