I used to be six years previous when my sister was born, and I nonetheless keep in mind it vividly. Within the hospital nursery, I noticed rows of tiny newborns and nurses transferring with practiced precision between the isolettes. The second stayed with me as a result of years later I discovered myself in the identical atmosphere. As a former NICU nurse at UCLA, I cared for the town’s most weak sufferers—an expertise that has guided me all through my nursing profession and my life.

As AI more and more dominates our conversations about each healthcare technique and on a regular basis tradition, I notice that my years of working nights, weekends, and holidays have taught me one thing essential: the work we as nurses do on the bedside can’t be automated. When a new child’s oxygen saturation drops unexpectedly and a split-second medical judgment has the potential to alter the course of an individual’s life, we want actual human expertise and instinct.

Admittedly, synthetic intelligence is reworking healthcare. Expertise can release time by automating easy however time-consuming duties comparable to writing and supporting medical decision-making by early warning programs. When deployed fastidiously, AI really improves our potential as nurses to deal with affected person care.

On the similar time, many healthcare executives are betting closely on AI to alleviate stress on the workforce, a development mirrored within the greater than 80% of healthcare leaders who anticipated generative AI to have a major influence on their organizations by 2025. This hope is comprehensible as a result of the necessity is nice. The World Well being Group predicts a worldwide scarcity of 11 million well being employees by 2030, of which 4.5 million might be nurses. A 3rd of nurses now report that burnout is extreme sufficient to think about leaving the occupation. As these workforce shortages grow to be prevalent, the primary intuition of many organizations is to combine new AI instruments into each potential operate, hoping that the know-how will shut these ever-widening gaps.

However this strategy misses an important distinction. AI that helps nurses is basically totally different from AI that replaces nurses. The important thing challenges dealing with nursing on the bedside can’t be automated. Sturdy nursing is determined by years of sensible expertise that comes from being current with sufferers. No algorithm can maintain a hand by a troublesome analysis, transfer a postoperative affected person, or learn the refined clues {that a} household is just not understanding a care plan. That is our irreplaceable work.

When AI creates new issues

Nurses’ skepticism about AI is just not unfounded. Nationwide Nurses United discovered that 60% of nurses don’t belief their employers to prioritize affected person security when implementing AI. One in 4 healthcare employees are involved about being changed by AI, with nurses considerably extra involved than medical doctors.

In services that use automated nurse handoffs, practically half of nurses reported that these automated studies don’t match their evaluation and miss essential particulars – data that might not be missed in nurse-to-nurse communications. About two in three nurses whose employers used AI-generated measures of affected person acuity mentioned the computer-generated measure didn’t match their evaluation as a result of the AI ​​didn’t bear in mind sufferers’ psychosocial or emotional wants.

The actual disaster

The actual downside behind the nurse scarcity – and the issue AI is designed to handle – is workforce sustainability.

Labor prices comprise greater than 50% of hospital working budgets, with 96% of healthcare CFOs citing labor prices as their greatest margin squeeze, and 99% pointing to nurse shortages as the basis trigger. The typical value to switch an RN on the bedside is $61,110, with each 1% change in RN turnover costing or saving the common hospital $289,000 per 12 months.

A 2025 examine discovered that just about two-thirds of nurses skilled excessive ranges of burnout. Insufficient compensation, poor management assist, and affected person abuse all contribute to a piece atmosphere that’s anxious at finest and insufferable at worst.

I finally transitioned from the NICU to outpatient surgical procedure, the place I used to be promoted to director of nursing. Once I left the NICU, it wasn’t as a result of I ended loving these little sufferers; it was as a result of my physique could not operate. I labored lengthy evening shifts, and development drills prevented me from catching up on sleep through the day. Hundreds of nurses face equally unimaginable selections, lacking their youngsters’s college occasions as a consequence of obligatory time beyond regulation, growing power well being issues from rotating shifts, or balancing rigid schedules with caregiving obligations at residence.

Nurses would not have to fret that their work will all the time take precedence over their private lives. The exterior life experiences that nurses convey are a part of what permits them to ship empathetic care that helps their communities thrive. So what occurs when nurses are not allowed to stay their very own lives?

When CFOs order the “elimination of contingent labor” to cut back seemingly increased upfront prices, hospitals rely extra closely on in-house staffing. Time beyond regulation is skyrocketing, burnout is rising and turnover prices are skyrocketing. It turns into a vicious circle: the fee financial savings from decreasing versatile deployment are offset by turnover prices that exceed the unique funding. No quantity of AI can repair this damaged system, nor can it substitute the human experiences that make nurses efficient healthcare suppliers.

What really works

We can’t resolve the nurse scarcity by changing nurses with AI. However we will use AI to maintain nurses within the occupation.

Versatile workforce fashions are an space ripe for technological innovation. Analysis persistently exhibits that work flexibility is a high precedence for nurses, and per diem advantages assist nurses obtain work-life steadiness. As a substitute of treating per diem employees as a final resort, hospitals ought to combine them as a part of their core workforce, prepared when wanted. The answer is know-how that automates credential verification, streamlines scheduling and supplies real-time workforce analytics, releasing up nurses to supply compassionate affected person care.

AI adoption is presently at an intriguing stage, however it’s nonetheless early days. Regardless of frequent headlines suggesting that the world’s workforce is about to be “changed” by AI, the fact – particularly in healthcare – is much much less sure, and the know-how continues to be falling brief in some ways. Our precedence have to be to advance the technological mastery of our groups and deploy AI the place efficient, all the time retaining people on the heart of the method.

This implies healthcare leaders should resist utilizing AI as a substitute for workers. As a substitute, spend money on workforce optimization know-how that empowers nurses, creates versatile pathways, and addresses the systemic points that trigger burnout.

That sense of awe I felt after I was six years previous within the hospital nursery represents what we threat dropping if we deal with nursing as simply one other job to get replaced by AI. The way forward for healthcare is about utilizing know-how to assist nurses thrive, not automate them.

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Angie Nasr is Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) at Medely, a number one healthcare staffing platform that connects nurses and different healthcare professionals with versatile job alternatives. With a wealthy background in medical nursing and healthcare administration, Angie performs a crucial position in guaranteeing the standard and security of care delivered by Medely’s platform. Angie acquired her Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) and later her Grasp of Science in Nursing (MSN) from the College of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). With greater than 15 years of expertise within the healthcare trade, Angie has held quite a lot of nursing and management positions the place she developed a deep understanding of the challenges confronted by each healthcare professionals and establishments. Her hands-on expertise in a medical atmosphere, coupled together with her management roles, has outfitted her with the experience to advocate for and assist Medely’s community of healthcare professionals.

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