The people who take your pulse, steady your IV drip and calm your nerves before surgery are running on empty. Newly released data show that nearly two-thirds of nurses report feeling burned out on the job, a crisis that not only threatens the well-being of caregivers but also raises the odds of potentially deadly mistakes. Now, a new AI-powered platform is betting it can patch the cracks in the nation’s nursing workforce.
“You can’t heal patients if you break the people who care for them,” said Ajay K. Gupta, co-founder and CEO of HSR.health, a nonprofit health research agency known for using geospatial intelligence and AI to predict health risks. The organization has developed the Clinician Wellness Platform, powered by a generative AI tool called ANNA, which is capable of combing through mountains of data, from shift records and patient loads to hours of rest and quality time away from work, to identify when burnout may be taking root. The aim is not just to spot the problem but to point hospitals toward targeted solutions before the damage is done.
The platform is being integrated with Rethink Synergy’s Nurse Acuity Model, which allows hospitals to align staffing with real-time patient needs. Together, the companies say, the technology could help rebalance workloads, safeguard patient safety, and give nurses a fighting chance at sustainable careers—all while lowering costs in a time of shrinking federal health budgets.
“The combination of our Nurse Acuity Model with HSR.health’s Clinician Wellness Intelligence offers an unprecedented level of visibility into the relationship between patient needs, nurse capacity, and workforce well-being,” said Jennifer Sobon, CEO and senior solutions engineer of Rethink Synergy. “This is a true force multiplier for quality improvement and cost control.”
Nurses are the backbone of America’s health care system, asked to shoulder a load that spans everything from administering medicine to coordinating with doctors to monitoring patients around the clock. Yet the toll of that workload is all too often burnout, with 62% of nurses reporting feeling burned out at work, according to newly released findings. Among younger nurses, those under 25, the number rises to 69%.
That level of exhaustion does not stay confined to break rooms. Burnout fuels staffing shortages, which in turn raise the risk of medical errors. Studies show that when nurse workloads stretch too thin, patient mortality rises by 7%.
The hazards compound in the minutiae of daily work. Nurses are interrupted during medication tasks an average of 6.3 times per hour, a disruption rate that significantly increases the likelihood of dangerous mistakes. For a patient, a mistimed or miscalculated dose can mean serious harm. For a nurse, the pressure never lets up.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the registered nursing workforce will expand by 6% between 2022 and 2032, growing from 3.1 million to 3.3 million nurses. But those gains are tempered by the reality that 193,100 job openings for RNs will appear each year, driven largely by retirements and career exits.
At the same time, the demand for advanced practice nurses—nurse practitioners, anesthetists and midwives—is expected to soar by 38% over the decade, according to the Bureau. Roughly 29,200 new advanced practice nurses will be needed annually to keep pace with the rising demand for both primary and specialty care.
Even as the workforce grows, the strain on those already in the field risks overwhelming progress. The pandemic made that clear, but the issue predates COVID-19. Hospitals face the paradox of needing more nurses while also struggling to retain the ones they have.
That is where AI-driven systems like ANNA may make a difference. By forecasting when and where fatigue could undermine safety, and by feeding that information into real-time staffing models, hospitals could reconfigure shifts. Proponents say the closed-loop system creates a more worker-friendly flow: nurses are less overworked, patients receive more attentive care, and hospitals cut reliance on expensive overtime or contract labor.
“This partnership ensures hospitals can deliver better care at lower cost—without sacrificing their most vital resource: their nurses,” Gupta said.
Health care workers often bristle at the suggestion that more technology is the answer to every systemic problem, but the creators of ANNA and the Nurse Acuity Model frame their solution as a way to ease the burden rather than add to it.
For patients, the question is whether the nurse by their bedside is running on fumes.
