Nursing + Service Design + Healthcare Innovation with Brittany Merkle — DT101 E38

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Welcome to the Design Thinking 101 podcast! I'm Dawan Stanford, your host. Today's </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Guest is Brittany Merkle. Her design path started at the University of Virginia in the College of Arts and Sciences. During her first semester, her grandfather was diagnosed with cancer. On weekend trips home, Brittany witnessed the incredible service Hospice offered. When she returned for her second year at college, she immediately changed majors and enrolled in nursing. Brittany shadowed nursing students and learned what nursing looked like as a career.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">She jumped into qualitative research and realized she wanted her career to combine two things: 1. Creativity, and 2. Make a difference. "These two seemed very siloed in my mind," Brittany remarked.  She hadn’t yet considered fusing these two aspects into one career.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Brittany wasn't sure where she wanted to go for graduate school, when she came across the Savannah College of Art and Design. She started with Hospice Case Management, but continued to think of service design in relation to her profession. Brittany enrolled in the SCAD Master's program and started to unlearn her previous content she learned from her Bachelor’s degree, which was her biggest challenge. She was one of the first nurses to graduate from the SCAD program.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">She was looking for a new approach to bring to the healthcare system, which she found as a lead innovation strategist with the University's healthcare team. Brittany wanted to make her mark in the system and to challenge herself with the design skills she has learned.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Bio</strong></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Brittany Merkle, RN, BSN, supports the innovation and design thinking efforts in UH Ventures. She graduated from the University of Virginia with a Bachelor of Science i