Meet the Keynote: Courtney Smith, BS, RN, CNOR

Iowa Nurse Innovator and Inventor of the OR Cord Clip

Courtney Smith has spent the past 12 years building her career where she feels most at home: in the operating room. Her path to perioperative nursing, however, wasn’t necessarily a straight one. After earning her Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Toledo, Courtney spent three years working in long-term care before pivoting into nursing and discovering the fast-paced, highly collaborative world of surgery. 

Courtney spent four years gaining operating room experience at St. Luke’s Hospital, a Level II trauma center in Cedar Rapids, before taking her skills on the road for an extended travel assignment in Greenville, South Carolina. There, she helped support the expansion and operations of an outpatient surgery center. Ultimately, Iowa called her home, and she joined Team 6 in the Main Operating Rooms at University of Iowa Health Care, where she has spent nearly 7 years caring for some of the most complex surgical patients in the state.

Today, Courtney is a Certified Perioperative Nurse and co-chair of the Perioperative Division Staff Council. She is passionate about frontline nursing, patient safety, and creating an environment where nurses feel empowered to use their experience and their voices to make care better. She believes some of the best ideas in health care come from the people doing the work every day—the people close enough to the problem to recognize when there might be a better way.

Outside of the operating room, Courtney’s favorite role is simply being Mom to her 11-year-old son, Keaton. When she isn’t in scrubs, she can usually be found spending time with her family, loving on her pets, baking something sourdough, tackling a creative project, or finding just about any excuse to be near the water—swimming, kayaking, or spending the day at a water park. She values the ordinary moments at home just as much as the big ones and credits her family with keeping her grounded, inspired, and always laughing.

That same curiosity and creativity follows Courtney into the operating room—and ultimately led to the Cord Clip. What began as a simple solution to a problem she repeatedly encountered during patient care grew into a frontline nursing innovation with measurable impact on safety and workflow. The Cord Clip reflects Courtney’s approach to nursing: recognize the problem, listen to the people experiencing it, and don’t be afraid to try something different.

Her experience developing the Cord Clip has reinforced something Courtney hopes other nurses take with them long after her presentation ends: you don’t need “innovator” in your job title to innovate. Sometimes innovation simply begins by noticing a problem and being willing to ask, “How can we make this better?”

And sometimes, the person with the answer is already standing at the bedside.