Eeshika Dadheech, RN, BSN
The ICU never really goes quiet. Monitors beep, ventilators hiss, and infusion pumps sound alarms while nurses continuously assess patients for subtle signs of improvement or deterioration. This constant clinical observation, interpretation, and anticipation, known as nursing surveillance, is a foundational nursing competency.
It was in the middle of this environment that Lindsey Roddy, an experienced ICU nurse, helped a fresh open-heart surgery patient out of bed for the first time. Early ambulation after surgery is critical to recovery, helping prevent complications such as pneumonia, blood clots, muscle loss, and pressure injuries. But critically ill patients do not simply get up and walk. They carry their care with them: IV poles, monitoring equipment, medications, drainage tubes, ventilators, and life-sustaining lines.
As Roddy helped the patient move, one of those lines snagged. The tension traveled directly to the patient’s central venous catheter, a tube threaded into a large vein near the heart to deliver critical medications and monitor his condition after surgery. It held, barely, underscoring how even routine moments in critical care can become dangerous in seconds.
She went looking for a product that could have prevented it. There was nothing on the market. It was not a fluke. It was just another day in critical care. So Lindsey Roddy decided to build the solution herself.
Preventing the Next Near Miss
Roddy’s experience was not an isolated incident, and her research team set out to prove it. In a national survey of 446 ICU nurses, nearly half reported witnessing a line dislodgement within the previous three months. Nearly the same number had seen those events escalate into serious patient emergencies involving severe bleeding, sudden cardiovascular instability, or cardiac arrest.
Nurses also reported spending a median of 30 minutes per shift physically managing lines and cords associated with patient mobility. Organizing tubing, pumps, monitors, and life-sustaining lines adds complexity to a task already requiring intense coordination and vigilance.
This is not a niche problem confined to a handful of hospitals or inexperienced clinicians. It is a routine patient safety challenge occurring daily in ICUs across the country
The Workaround Economy
When the same survey asked nurses what they actually use to manage lines, the most common answer, cited by more than half of respondents, was tape.
The rest of the list sounded less like specialized medical equipment and more like whatever happened to be nearby: tongue depressors, medicine cups, hemostats, and elastic straps repurposed from other clinical equipment. These were not purpose-built clinical tools. They were workarounds; improvised solutions nurses created because no better option existed.
In many ways, modern healthcare quietly depends on these kinds of workarounds. Nurses constantly adapt, improvise, and compensate for operational gaps in order to keep patients safe and care moving forward. But improvisation comes at a cost. Time spent untangling lines, securing tubing, and reorganizing equipment is time diverted from direct patient care and patient mobility.
The tape is not just a patient safety problem. It reflects a broader operational problem hiding in plain sight
The Patient Safety Solution: SecureMove-TLC™
Roddy’s answer was SecureMove-TLC, a patented wearable device designed to organize and secure multiple lines during patient movement. Worn on the patient’s arm, the device can hold up to eight lines of varying sizes and absorb tension if a line becomes snagged or pulled during ambulation. That matters because central venous catheters, the kind nearly dislodged during Roddy’s ICU experience years earlier, can become dangerously displaced with relatively little force.
The device uses no adhesives, is made from skin-safe medical-grade materials, and moves with the patient from bed to transport to recovery. In doing so, it aims not only to reduce line dislodgements, but also to reduce the time and complexity involved in managing lines and tubing during patient mobility. If the device prevents even a single line dislodgement it offsets its own cost.
The innovation has already received national recognition, including Audience Choice honors through the Mayo Clinic and Arizona State University MedTech Accelerator. But what makes SecureMove-TLC especially notable is not simply the device itself. The idea did not emerge from a commercially imagined need or abstract market analysis. It came directly from a patient safety problem Roddy experienced firsthand as an ICU nurse, then went on to study across hundreds of nurses and multiple hospitals.
Too often in healthcare innovation, products intended for nurses are designed without nurses meaningfully involved in identifying the problem or shaping the solution. In this case, Roddy experienced the patient safety risk firsthand as an ICU nurse, then went on to study and design a solution grounded in the realities of bedside care.
