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The largest nursing union in the US, National Nurses United (NNU), is sounding the alarm about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare. In April, the union’s affiliate California Nurses Association (CNA) protested an AI conference helmed by managed care consortium Kaiser Permanente.
Like workers in other sectors who are worried about AI encroachment, the nurses fear that the tech is contributing to the devaluation of their skills amid what they say is already a “chronic” understaffing crisis, nurses reported in an NNU survey of 2,300 registered nurses and members in early 2024.
But the NNU, which represents approximately 225,000 nurses across the country, also claims healthcare operators are using AI hype as a pretext to rush half-baked and potentially harmful technologies into service, says Michelle Mahon, NNU’s assistant director of nursing practice. Mahon warns continuous data collection and analysis is not a substitute for nursing knowledge or physical resources.
“The most harmful thing we’re seeing is the way it’s being used to redesign care delivery and usurp the skill of decision-makers,” Mahon told Healthcare Brew.
In an emailed statement to Healthcare Brew, Kaiser spokesperson Kathleen Campini Chambers wrote the company had provided nurses with “state-of-the-art tools and technologies that support our mission of providing high-quality, affordable healthcare to best meet our members’ and patients’ needs.”
Cathy Kennedy is CNA president, a VP of NNU, and a registered nurse. She works in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Kaiser-run Roseville Medical Center, and told Healthcare Brew that real-time tracking of nurse activity can draw out procedures that need to be completed quickly—such as NICU exams that can expose premature babies to the cold and pathogens.
“We wash our hands before we go to the patient, put gloves on, do what we need to do, take your gloves off, wash your hands, go to the computer, put the information in, and then you go back and forth,” Kennedy said. “You see how inefficient that is.”
In some cases, automated systems may be limiting some patients’ ability to communicate directly with their doctors. One test study of a Kaiser AI system found that nearly 32% of patient messages were never seen by a human physician.
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