Our Current Healthcare Crisis and Its Impact on Nursing
Nurses have never been more critical to the survival of our healthcare system. Demand continues to outpace supply, with HRSA Health Workforce projecting a 10% shortage of RNs in 2026 and 2031.
An aging population of Baby Boomers will hit retirement age by 2030, driving more demand for healthcare services. At the same time, 25% of nurses surveyed said they plan to exit the profession by 2027.
Even if new enthusiasm for the profession is emerging, a lack of nurse educators prevents nursing schools from accepting enough students to help solve the shortfall.
The nursing shortage could have dire consequences for our nation’s healthcare system, causing delays, impacting patient outcomes, driving up costs, and threatening institutional stability.
As Plato famously said, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” There’s never been a better time to get creative about solving problems in healthcare.
Virtual nursing solutions can relieve clinicians and enhance patient care by offloading or reallocating manual-intensive tasks like administrative work so nurses can work at the top of their licenses and leverage technology to mentor new nurses.
Top Challenges Nurses Face
Burnout
In a recent joint survey by the American Nurses Foundation and McKinsey, 56% of nurses reported burnout symptoms, including emotional exhaustion. Burnout and high turnover rates go hand in hand. Due to their high-stress environment, some specialties, such as telemetry, reach turnover rates as high as 23.7%.
Burnout majorly impacts not just turnover but team dynamics. High turnover rates cause lower morale as nurses deal with constantly changing teams that never get the chance to function at peak levels.
Administrative Burden
The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on Building a Thriving Health Workforce: Addressing Health Worker Burnout found that nurses can spend up to 41% of their time on the EHR and documentation.
The joint ANF and McKinsey survey also discovered that 45% of nurses feel frustrated by administrative tasks, which detract from the time they could spend caring for patients.
Keeping up with Standards of Care
Patient acuity continues to rise. It’s difficult to maintain care standards, especially where nurse-to-patient ratios exceed recommended levels. It puts nurses in situations where they cannot deliver the best care for patients, which impacts morale and patient outcomes.
Patient Safety
High nurse workloads are linked to an increase in patient safety incidents, leading to higher rates of medication errors and patient falls.
According to Patient Safety Network, “inadequate nurse staffing can lead to missed nursing care and negative patient outcomes, such as patient mortality.”
Nurse Safety
Reports of workplace violence against nurses have increased by 30% in the last decade.
A survey conducted by National Nurses United found that “8 in 10 nurses experienced at least one type of workplace violence in the past year.”
Artisight’s Clinician-Led Approach to Technology and Nursing
Artisight’s team of clinicians and AI scientists understand firsthand the challenges nurses face.
We are committed to solving healthcare’s toughest challenges with technology that supports — never replaces — nurses.
The reason for healthcare is people. This human focus will never change.
As we face challenges in our healthcare system, we can look to AI as a sidekick that automates routine and repetitive tasks so clinicians can spend their time caring for patients.
How Virtual Nursing Helps Solve Healthcare’s Challenges
- Bolsters Morale and Skyrockets Nursing Satisfaction
Virtual nursing care models foster collaboration, allowing professionals to have a greater impact as they accomplish more collectively than what they could do independently.
The bedside nurse is free to focus on the care needed in the room with the patient and is supported by the virtual nurse, who can quickly access and document needed information.
This improves focus and efficiency and has demonstrated improvements in not only nursing satisfaction but also patient satisfaction.
Virtual nurses can contribute to their teams while working at the top of their license but in a new and different way than traditional bedside care.
This diversity is a welcome change for nurses looking for variety in how they can contribute to patient care and can provide a break from the everyday pressures of the hospital environment.
Healthcare systems that use Artisight’s Smart Hospital Platform have reported a 94% nursing satisfaction score and a 45% reduction in nursing turnover.
Higher retention rates lead to higher-performing teams. The longer nurses work together, the greater the chance everyone hits their stride, benefiting both nurses and patients.
- Champions Quality of Care and Boosts Patient Safety
Virtual nursing solutions enable healthcare organizations to elevate bedside care by achieving higher clinical standards.
Artisight’s Smart Hospital platform features patient monitoring, providing real-time data and alerts to help clinicians make more informed decisions, speed response times, reduce patient harm, and improve outcomes.
Artisight Patient Room includes Remote Observer that uses AI to detect movement, notify the patient observer to intervene, and prevent patient falls. Artisight clients attain an average of 83% reduction in falls and 64% reduction in remote observer costs.
- Enhances Nurse Training and Support
Virtual nursing care models can provide ongoing training and decision support tools, helping nursing staff stay current with best practices and clinical guidelines.
Solutions like Artisight Patient Room allow healthcare organizations to take creative approaches to staffing by appealing to experienced nurses who may wish to work in a remote capacity as they mentor and support novice bedside nurses.
- Improves Care Coordination
Virtual nursing solutions like Artisight Patient Room help close gaps in patient care by enabling real-time communication between clinicians and patients, streamlining information, and enhancing patient monitoring.
A partnership between a virtual nurse and a bedside nurse allows a division of responsibilities that supports meeting patient needs, with the right resource at the right time.
Bedside nurses have more time for tasks that require an in-person interaction while the virtual nurse can support documentation, education and follow-up care that can be provided remotely.
It also allows nurses to leverage real-time data to create personalized care plans and engage patients with education and resources for better health outcomes.
- Supports Nurse Safety
Safety features, such as alert systems for duress situations, help protect nurses from workplace violence and ensure a safer working environment.
Artisight Patient Room includes Hospital Viewer, which features staff duress capabilities to enhance nurse safety.
AI as Your Copilot
Technology can come alongside your team to help reallocate time-consuming and tedious tasks so clinicians can focus on patients. A virtual nursing program with a robust technology platform like Artisight can take the program to the next level by providing automation tools that remove high-friction tasks.
Fall detection algorithms, pressure ulcer prevention algorithms, staff duress alerting, and even automated documentation tools are all possible.
As the virtual nursing program grows, so can the automation opportunities with AI. Our AI is developed and trained in concert with our customers, ensuring the accuracy needed to make these tools valuable to clinicians.
Virtual nursing solutions offer many benefits, from increasing nurse retention and improving team morale to keeping patients and clinicians safe and improving care quality and efficiency.
Artisight is here to help you on your journey to becoming a smarter hospital. Explore Artisight Patient Room to learn how Virtual Nursing, Remote Observer, TeleConsult, and more can help your healthcare team.
