Some people come to their career choice gradually, while others recognize their calling from a young age.
For Mithun Mahinda, BSN, RN, CCRN-CMC, a clinical nurse in the intensive care unit at UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center, (SMUCLA), his aha moment came at age 16 when he was hospitalized in the ICU with septic shock after a ruptured appendix.
Mahinda was in the ICU for nearly four weeks, requiring multiple trips to the operating room and being intubated much of that time. He remembers being awakened daily for a spontaneous breathing trial (SBT) to determine whether his breathing tube could be removed. Then he would be put back under until it was time to test again.
One day, a nurse came in and removed the tube. Just like that.
Mahinda comes from a family of physicians, but from that day forward, he knew his path would be nursing.
“I believe that because that nurse understood my clinical situation, she was able to advocate for me,” Mahinda, now 30, says, adding that the experience continues to drive him. “Everything that I’ve been a part of and contributed to this field has always been fueled by that.”
Advocating for patients
That early experience taught Mahinda the value of critical thinking in professional nursing, he says, and how that leads to patient-centered care.
“I’ve had the opportunity to test that if we better prepare our nurses in nursing school, challenge their clinical reasoning, and teach them to truly understand why they’re performing certain actions, then they become critical thinkers,” says Mahinda, who has worked at UCLA Health since 2016.
Critical thinking leads to clinical decision-making. “Only then can we develop a new generation of clinical nurses who can more effectively advocate for their patients,” he says.
Guided by this commitment to critical thinking and patient advocacy, Mahinda has taken tangible steps to empower nurses and elevate their voices. He was instrumental in developing the New Knowledge and Innovation Collaborative (NKI) by unifying three previously siloed councils — New Knowledge and Innovation, Nursing Prioritization, and Superusers — into a cohesive force dedicated to advancing nursing practice.
Pioneering innovation: Engaging nurses in biodesign
During his tenure as chair of NKI, Mahinda advocated for clinical nurse involvement in improving workflows impacting nursing. As part of the Research and Innovation Council (RIC), Mahinda used his systems-thinking lens to identify opportunities for clinical nurses to engage in problem-solving through innovation.
In 2023, Mahinda pitched the Biodesign Innovation Sprint initiative and, with funding secured, the first UCLA Biodesign Innovation Sprint embarked on a groundbreaking journey.
Bedside nurses engaged in the sprint – a short, intense period of brainstorming, prototyping, and testing solutions to a mutual problem. This process yielded a versatile snap-band IV-cord organizer, now in the patent process under the name USNAP. Following that success, the Biodesign Innovation Sprint has become a permanent part of the RIC.
As a leader, Mahinda is dedicated to problem-solving and creating opportunities for his colleagues. He says frontline nurses are best positioned to address clinical challenges and sees an opportunity to collaborate across disciplines.
“High-quality teams with diverse interdisciplinary perspectives drive disruptive innovation by leveraging design-thinking, human-centered design, and performance-improvement strategies to effectively address end-user needs,” Mahinda says. “We need to foster a culture that embraces innovation, values diverse perspectives, and continuously seeks to improve and adapt.”
Educating new nurses
Mahinda also developed an educational bundle that offers in-class, unit-level teaching by bedside clinical nurses. He launched this initiative after observing the impact the pandemic had on new nurses entering the ICU with limited training in the clinical setting. Mahinda optimized educational materials to create a curriculum for the medical ICU environment.
“We saw that nurses weren’t always receiving the same level of education or skill training during and after the pandemic,” he says. “We developed this educational bundle that bridged the transition from nursing school to our organization.”
That initiative, “Nursing is Not Multiple Choice: Restructure Education Using Design Thinking,” included the creation of an education model, which he designed in collaboration with Dahlia Maldonado, nursing practice outcomes and Magnet Program coordinator for SMUCLA. It gained international recognition at the 2023 Yonsei International Nursing Conference in South Korea and was presented in the U.S. at the 2023 Association for Leadership Science in Nursing Conference and the 2024 American Organization for Nursing Leadership Conference.
Mahinda says he hopes to explore how this model can be implemented in other nursing practice settings through a future research project. He credits Chief Nursing Officer David Bailey for supporting and elevating the clinical nurse voice when identifying solutions that impact nursing practice.
Mahinda’s longstanding passion for mentorship and education has been evident throughout his journey at UCLA Health. In 2019, he earned a Daisy Award, nominated for “going above and beyond, acting as a role model toward student nurses to precept and mentor new, upcoming professional nursing students.”
Mahinda was again honored for his work in 2023 as one of 30 nurses — 10 from UCLA Health — to be celebrated in the first year of the Simms/Mann Family Foundation’s Off the Chart award program, which recognizes nursing excellence.
He says he hopes the award will change the image and understanding of nursing.
“I think it’s going to promote the acceptance that nurses function in different roles,” Mahinda says. “We can be content experts at a system level like clinical nurse specialists, we can be a nurse-lawyer, we can be a nurse-patient advocate.”
Mahinda’s commitment to innovation led to him also receiving the Nurse Innovator Award during the 2024 SMUCLA Nursing Awards.
Vision for the future
In 2024, Mahinda has taken on a new role: chair of the Nurse Executive Council (NEC). He aims to work collaboratively with clinical nurses, system-level mentors and executive leadership to create positive changes for nurses throughout UCLA Health.
Mahinda envisions a future where proactive leadership drives collaboration and innovation that ensures UCLA Health remains at the forefront of health care excellence. Central to this vision is the involvement of clinical nurses in decision-making processes. He advocates for formalized education and innovation frameworks for nurses, emphasizing leadership, change and organizational dynamics. This includes tools for influencing people, understanding how change happens and is adopted, and navigating organizational complexities.
"Now is the time for system-level change,” Mahinda says. “UCLA must embrace a culture of innovation, value diverse perspectives, and continuously seek improvement."
He sees a future, he says, where every voice is heard and valued, creating an inclusive, equitable and effective health care environment.
