Healthcare’s obsession with artificial intelligence misses the point of nursing shortage

I was six years old when my sister was born, and I remember it vividly. In the hospital nursery, I watched rows of tiny newborns and nurses move with precision from island to island. This moment stuck with me because years later, I found myself in the same situation. As a former NICU nurse at UCLA, I cared for the city’s most vulnerable patients—an experience that continues to guide me throughout my nursing career and throughout my life.

As artificial intelligence increasingly dominates our conversations around health care strategies and day-to-day culture, I realized that my years of working nights, weekends, and holidays taught me something important: The work we nurses do at the bedside cannot be automated. When a newborn's oxygen saturation drops unexpectedly and a split-second clinical judgment has the potential to change the course of someone's life, we need real human experience and intuition.

It’s true that artificial intelligence is transforming healthcare operations. Technology can free up time by automating simple but time-consuming tasks such as line drawing and supporting clinical decision-making through early warning systems. If deployed thoughtfully, AI can really improve our ability as nurses to focus on patient care.

At the same time, many healthcare executives are investing heavily in artificial intelligence to relieve workforce stress, a trend reflected in the fact that more than 80% of health system leaders expect generative AI to have a significant impact on their organizations by 2025. This hope is understandable, as the need is great. The World Health Organization predicts that by 2030, there will be a global shortage of 11 million medical staff, of which 4.5 million are nurses. One in three nurses now says burnout is severe enough to consider leaving the profession. Given these staffing shortages, the first reaction of many organizations is to plug new AI tools into every possible function in the hope that the technology can fill these growing gaps.

But this approach ignores a key distinction. AI that supports nurses is fundamentally different from AI that replaces nurses Nurse. The core challenge facing bedside care cannot be automated. Strong care is based on years of hands-on experience with patients. No algorithm can navigate the difficult diagnostic process, reposition patients after surgery, or read subtle clues that families don't understand the care plan. This is our irreplaceable job.

When artificial intelligence creates new problems

The nursing community’s skepticism about artificial intelligence is not unfounded. The National Nurses United found that 60% of nurses don’t trust employers to prioritize patient safety when implementing artificial intelligence. A quarter of health care workers are worried about being replaced by artificial intelligence, with nurses more worried than doctors.

Nearly half of nurses in facilities using automated nurse handoffs reported that these automated reports did not match their assessments and missed critical details—information that cannot be missed in communications between nurses. About two-thirds of employers using AI-generated patient acuity measures said the computer-generated measures did not match their assessments because the AI ​​failed to take into account patients' psychosocial or emotional needs.

real crisis

The real issue behind the nursing shortage—and the one that AI needs to solve—is workforce sustainability.

Labor costs account for more than 50% of hospital operating budgets, with 96% of health system CFOs citing labor costs as the top profit pressure, and 99% citing nursing shortages as the root cause. The average cost of replacing a bedside registered nurse is $61,110, and for every 1% change in registered nurse turnover, the average hospital costs or saves $289,000 per year.

A 2025 study found that nearly two-thirds of nurses experience severe burnout. Insufficient wages, poor leadership support, and patient mistreatment all contribute to a work environment that is stressful at best and intolerable at worst.

I eventually moved from the NICU to outpatient surgery and was promoted to Director of Nursing. When I left the NICU, it wasn't because I stopped loving those little patients; That's because my body isn't functioning. I worked long night shifts and the construction jackhammer kept me awake during the day. Thousands of nurses face similar impossible choices, missing their children's school activities because of mandatory overtime, working long shifts that lead to chronic health problems, or balancing inflexible schedules with home care responsibilities.

Nurses should not have to worry about their work ever taking precedence over their personal lives. The outside life experience nurses bring is part of their ability to provide empathetic care, helping their communities thrive. So what happens when nurses are no longer allowed to live their lives?

When CFOs demand the “elimination of contingent labor” to cut seemingly high upfront costs, hospitals become more reliant on in-house staff. Overtime surges, burnout increases, and turnover costs soar. This creates a vicious cycle: cost savings from reducing flexible staff are offset by turnover expenses that exceed the original investment. No amount of AI can fix this broken system or replace the human experience that makes nurses effective caregivers.

What is the actual effect

We cannot solve the nursing shortage by replacing nurses with artificial intelligence. But we can use artificial intelligence to retain nurses in the profession.

Flexible staffing models are one area ripe for technological innovation. Research consistently shows that job flexibility is a top priority for nurses and that per diem arrangements help nurses achieve work-life balance. Hospitals should not view per diem employees as a last resort, but rather include them as part of the core workforce so they are ready when needed. The solution is technology that automatically validates credentials, streamlines scheduling and provides real-time workforce analytics, all of which frees up nurses to provide compassionate patient care.

Artificial intelligence adoption is at an interesting stage right now, but it’s still early days. While headlines often suggest that the world's workforce is on the verge of being “replaced” by artificial intelligence, the reality (especially in healthcare) is far less certain, and the technology still falls short in many ways. Our priority is to promote technical fluency among teams and leverage AI where effective, but always keep human-centered processes at the center.

This means that healthcare leaders must resist using AI to replace staffing. Instead, invest in workforce optimization technologies that empower nurses, create flexible pathways, and address systemic issues that contribute to burnout.

The sense of awe I felt in a hospital nursery when I was six years old is representative of what we might lose if we think of nursing as just another task to be replaced by artificial intelligence. The future of healthcare is about using technology to help nurses grow, not automate them.

Image from stock.xchng user ilco

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