How AI and Intelligent Automation Can Support and Retain Nurses

Frontline nurses across the country remain in a state of constant crisis as they attempt to deliver patient care while facing tremendously stressful environments, untenable patient-to-nurse ratios, and frustrating process inefficiencies. In fact, about 100,000 registered nurses left the workforce during the past two years due to stress, burnout and retirements, and another 610,388 reported an intent to leave by 2027, according to a study released by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing.

Nurses who’ve remained on the frontline are battling unprecedented burnout and shift fatigue. One of the most concerning consequences stemming from shortages is that nurses inherit the additional burden of managing administrative and operational responsibilities on top of their typical clinical duties. Constant administrative tasks leave nurses struggling to find enough time and mental energy to be present with their patients at the bedside, plan their days and allocate appropriate staff, ultimately fueling high levels of burnout.

There are immediate remedies available to improve the work environment for nurses today. Many hospital leaders are turning to digital transformation tools like generative AI and intelligent automation to reduce administrative burdens and support efficient operational workflows. While these tools cannot remove all the pressures nurses experience, they can greatly reduce their day-to-day workloads by automating manual tasks that lessen overall burnout and fatigue.

Generative AI solutions have the ability to provide nurses with human-like conversations and actionable insights to support data-driven decision-making. This helps nurses quickly respond to patient flow, staffing, and other capacity management issues on the fly without having to stop and dig for detailed information — because best of all, this type of solution is designed to run completely in the background of nurses’ tech devices. Utilizing historic data and predictive analytics, this type of tool can send out actionable alerts or be searched easily to answer questions like “tell me up-to-the-minute staffing recommendations.” 

Intelligent automation tools are also designed to be integrated into nurses’ workflows rather than be a disruption. These tools enhance healthcare operations by enabling advanced capacity planning, analyzing staffing needs, and eliminating manual work. Automating tasks like repetitive data entry frees up valuable time, and relevant automated alerts like flagging high capacity levels or discharge barriers support swift responsive action. 

For the nursing frontline specifically, these advanced AI and automation allow hospital leaders to prepare staff for what’s coming and provide a unified communication platform, transparency into priorities and needs throughout the organization, and automated action prompts and notifications to support daily patient care progression. As a result, hundreds of emails, phone calls, and paper trails are eliminated, removing confusion, saving time, and keeping everyone aligned.

Here are a few key scenarios where generative AI and intelligent automation can significantly support nurses in their day-to-day work:

1. Proactive Planning

Assigning the appropriate staff to align with individual and enterprise-wide patient care needs requires significant back-and-forth noise. In a single day, a nurse leader might place 100 or more phone calls just to get one shift covered. These individuals are also responsible for monitoring float coverage, which can be a timely process and result in assigning floaters to an off-core unit. 

Imagine having an ‘early alert system’ for nurses to flag issues throughout the day before they happen. With the help of generative AI and intelligent automation, this is a reality. For example, a proactive generative AI solution can alert nurse leaders to potential issues, like scheduling and staffing roadblocks with best approaches and tangible recommendations on how to approach and solve issues — two days ahead of time compared to two hours ahead of time. Additionally, when an unmet need is predicted, leadership is automatically sent notifications and recommended actions. With a simple click of a button, they can respond accordingly, like by closing a currently-underutilized inpatient unit and moving staff resources to cover needed beds in another. All relevant individuals are notified of the course of action, giving everyone more time to plan and keeping nurses in their core units as much as possible, thus increasing overall employee satisfaction. 

2. Improving Patient Care and Engagement

Nurses become nurses because they want to care for people. The unnecessary stressors stemming from inefficient, manual, and administrative tasks detract from their primary goal of patient care and add burdens that can be removed with intelligent automation.

Even the smallest of improvements can make a difference. Workflow automation for administrative processes can reduce the burden of data entry, especially in terms of care planning and patient documentation. This means nurses have more time to focus on patient care and practice at the top of their license. The reduced administrative burden also allows nurses more time to care for themselves and recharge, which is essential to sustainably optimize patient outcomes.

Technology like generative AI can also provide nurses with recommended action to a potential medical or operational issue. Nurse leaders can be notified of a risk in operating room, inpatient, and infusion areas if the AI solution detects deviations from standard processes and will provide mitigation recommendations before issues arise. This provides operational leaders, staff, and clinicians with the information needed to proactively flex other assets and resources to avoid any potential safety issues.

3. Streamlining Communication

Whether it’s patient or staffing-related, a nurse’s job relies on an efficient flow and exchange of information. However, manual communication techniques are often outdated and interrupt the day-to-day flow, as nurses must interface with several different mediums of communication to get a single answer. AI and intelligent automation enable seamless, consistent messaging to unit-based staff or across the entire organization, resulting in improved team collaboration and faster response times.

For example, this could be especially useful to improve the processes used to deploy float nurses. Without the right communication tools, float nurses start their day without knowing where they’ll be working or where they’ll be going next. They end up playing phone tag with the staffing office as they juggle their current assignments while preparing to move to their next assignment. With a system that uses predictive analytics and built-in communication tools, deployments can be pre-planned and communication can be automated. It’s a win/win – float pool resources are optimized, and deployment expectations are clear in advance.

Health systems face an urgent mandate to rethink how they can achieve operational excellence and prioritize strategies that optimize staffing resources while also removing the barriers and bottlenecks that inhibit nurses’ ability to efficiently deliver patient care. Deploying AI and automation can remove mundane and repetitive tasks, reduce burnout and fatigue, and optimize the skills of those who remain at the bedside. Ultimately, this technology eases the workload and alleviates a nurse’s day-to-day pressures so that job satisfaction is improved and nursing staff can focus on the things that technology can never replace: the physical act of caring for patients. 

About Teri Ridge, RN

Teri Ridge, RN is a Clinical Operations Advisor at LeanTaaS, a company providing software solutions that combine lean principles, predictive and prescriptive analytics, and machine learning to transform hospital and infusion center operations. Teri brings a wealth of experience to this topic, with over 30 years in the healthcare industry. Her extensive background covers a wide range of fields, including nurse management, patient flow, and project management. Teri has consistently delivered impressive results and effective change throughout her career working for both health systems, and vendors.

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