Why Nurse Leaders Deserve a Seat at the AI Table

Ali Morin, MSN, RN, NI-BC, Chief Nursing Informatics Officer, symplr

AI is unlocking new possibilities for care delivery. As the frontline guardians of patient care, nurses play a critical role in ensuring AI solutions effectively address healthcare’s most pressing challenges. To fully harness AI’s potential, healthcare organizations must bring nurses, other clinicians and nurse leaders to the decision-making table.  

Evaluating the Healthcare Landscape

In the last year alone, healthcare organizations faced over 700 data breaches, a nearly 21% turnover rate, and a 7% increase in costs of care. These figures underscore mounting challenges within the healthcare landscape, but despite rising pressures, IT, clinical, and operational leaders remain divided on which issues to tackle first.

Without alignment on technology strategies, healthcare leaders will continue to work in silos, missing the opportunity to leverage AI for enhanced clinical care and improved operational efficiencies. Yet, there is a way forward that begins with placing nurse leaders at the center of AI-driven transformation. 

Why Nurse Leaders Are Essential for AI Success

Nurse leaders possess a deep understanding of how clinical and operational workflows move throughout an organization to impact patient outcomes. This unique perspective lends itself to championing technology solutions that truly alleviate staff burdens, and with nurse turnover exceeding 18%, adopting AI tools that streamline inefficient processes is critical. 

By leveraging nurse leaders’ expertise, healthcare organizations can more accurately pinpoint the broken workflows impeding clinical and operational functions. This insight facilitates more effective AI implementation, supporting improved patient care, reduced administrative burdens, and enhanced staff satisfaction. Key areas where nurse leaders’ insights can drive AI enhancement include:

Optimized staffing: Predictive AI learns from historical data to forecast patient needs, identify staffing gaps, and optimize schedules based on staff availability and skill sets. AI-driven scheduling tools can reduce staff scheduling time by 40-50%, according to the latest use cases. Enhanced patient safety: AI-powered monitoring provides real-time vital tracking, alerting nurses to early warning signs. AI also mitigates adverse events by analyzing patient data to identify potential drug interactions, preventing medication errors.  Streamlined inventory management: Offering organization-wide visibility, AI-driven inventory tools track medical supply levels and expiration dates in real time. These applications reduce manual tracking, while providing nurses with peace of mind that essential supplies are always on hand. 

To fully leverage nurse leaders’ in-depth knowledge, healthcare organizations must reimagine current approaches to technology decision-making. 

Empowering Nurse Leaders in the AI Age

Over half of clinicians believe that their hospital operations software enables them to provide the best possible patient care. This gap underscores a critical disconnect between technology decision-makers and frontline healthcare professionals. 

Involving nurse leaders in AI decisions ensures that new technologies meet frontline needs, while avoiding the common missteps of misaligned integrations, such as software increasing administrative workload and breeding discontent among staff. This approach promotes trust among teams, setting the foundation for a culture of AI innovation. 

Maximizing nurse leaders’ involvement in AI integration starts with the following best practices: 

Shared governance:  A main component of the Magnet Model from the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC),  the shared governance model affirms that healthcare organizations thrive when decisions leverage perspectives across clinical, operational, and technology/IT teams. Nurses and clinicians who are part of the shared governance structure in healthcare organizations bring valuable insight into staffing, patient monitoring, clinical communications, and more, helping to surface hidden pain points and prevent costly software mismatches.  Incremental adoption: Piloting AI tools with nurse leader involvement helps facilitate real-time feedback and customization before a full-scale rollout. This approach ensures that AI solutions demonstrate measurable success and integrate seamlessly within existing systems. Incremental adoption adds trust in AI to further roll out solutions. AI literacy: As AI models rapidly evolve, nurse leaders will require ongoing training to stay informed about AI’s capabilities, ethical considerations, and limitations. Developing best practices on balancing AI-driven recommendations with clinical critical thinking is key to cultivating AI literacy.   Integrated approaches: As healthcare organizations expand their technology portfolios, nurse leaders will rely on centralized systems to manage multiple AI tools. Operations platforms provide a unified interface for AI-powered applications, promoting more streamlined workflows, cross-team collaboration, and more efficient patient care. Interconnected platforms also provide leaders with a full view of active software solutions, a critical asset for organizational security. 

The Future of Nurse Leadership in AI-Driven Healthcare

When nurse leaders play an active role in AI adoption, new technology transforms from just another tool to a true asset in delivering high-quality care, improving staff satisfaction and enhancing operational efficiency. Nurses hold the key to revolutionizing standards of care in the AI age, and by investing in ongoing training, leadership development, and shared decision-making, healthcare organizations can empower nurse leaders to drive effective and transformative AI adoption. The time has come to call nursing leaders to the AI roundtable. 

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About Ali Morin, MSN, RN, NI-BC

Ali Morin, MSN, RN, NI-BC is the Chief Nursing Informatics Officer at symplr, an enterprise healthcare operations software and services. As a board-certified clinical informatics nurse with more than 20 years of direct and operational healthcare IT experience, Ali is a leader in strategic and operational nursing communication and technology-enabled care delivery. Externally, Ali represents symplr on the Healthcare Information & Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Vendor CNO / CNIO working group, the Alliance for Nursing Informatics (ANI) Policy Committee, and is co-chair of the American Organization for Nursing Leadership (AONL) Leadership, Innovation, Technology and Transformation Committee. As part of her work with AONL, Ali helped develop new guiding principles that ensure nurse leaders are equipped with the necessary skills to support and lead digital health strategies and transformations.