At Incredible Health, our mission is to help healthcare professionals live better lives, and find and do their best work. That includes paying close attention to how the healthcare workforce is changing, capturing an honest account of their perceptions of work, and sharing it with healthcare employers, workers, and the media. Through our research, we aim not only to understand the state of America’s healthcare workforce, but we seek to understand the state of America’s healthcare system in its ability to serve an increasingly diverse and aging population. This year, one theme ran through almost every answer: In the last 12 months, healthcare workers have moved faster on AI than the healthcare employers they work for, and the workers have done it largely on their own. We also uncovered more insights for workforce retention, the top workforce concern healthcare leaders are tackling today.
Today, we are releasing our 7th Annual State of Nursing Report: AI Adoption Trends and Future Implications. It draws on a national survey of 2,240 healthcare workers including nurses alongside Incredible Health’s marketplace data from 1.5 million U.S. healthcare workers. The headline finding is simple and consequential: healthcare workers have entered the AI era, and healthcare employers have not caught up yet.
Nurses have adopted AI at accelerating speed.
In a single year, the share of nurses using AI nearly tripled, from 15% to 44%. We’ve now moved beyond the early adopters. 86% of nurse AI users are satisfied with it, and the more they use it, the less they fear it. AI is no longer a wave for healthcare leaders to wait out, and its use is accelerating.
Without cohesive strategy and training, AI becomes a tax, not a tool.
AI adoption among nurses has outrun corporate strategy and execution. Only 8% of nurses say their employer has set a clear AI strategy for their role, and 46% received no AI training in the last year. Among nurses who use AI regularly, 24% of those with training report saving more than 1 hour a day, compared with 16% of those without training. Without a thoughtful rollout strategy and training, AI becomes a tax on the workforce rather than the productivity gain leaders are counting on.
Nurses job-hunt with AI. Employers do not hire with it.
Nurses are using AI in their job search, and at their jobs. 39% of nurses have used AI in their own job search, rising to 60% among nurses under 28. Healthcare workers use AI to find roles, polish resumes, and prepare for interviews. 65% of job-searching nurses accepted or seriously considered a role they had reservations about simply to end the search, and starting a role that does not fit is a leading indicator of early turnover.
While AI usage in job search is becoming more mainstream, adoption of AI on the hiring employer side lags behind. Of all healthcare employers who use AI, only 4% use it to screen or hire. As application volume climbs, the right fit gets harder to spot, and the pressure shifts to employers trying to identify the best candidates while managing higher applicant volumes. The organizations that can move quickly and still find the right hires will reach the best talent first, especially in highly competitive talent markets.
Retention is about more than pay.
Retention risk runs deeper than most turnover reports suggest. 75% of nurses have applied or seriously considered applying for a new role in the last three years. While 46% of nurses rank pay raise as the top change they want to see, only 20% of nurses say pay is the main reason they stay. Compensation matters, but staffing, scheduling, and career growth are also important to nurses. 90% of nurses say retention support has not meaningfully changed in the past year. Some of that is real underinvestment, but much of it is a communication gap: the work happens, but nurses never hear about it.
The path forward is execution.
Increasing productivity through AI is more than choosing the right tools. The advantage belongs to the organizations willing to give their workers a clear strategy, thorough training, and a hiring and retention experience built for how healthcare professionals work today. The employers that move with focus this year will not simply keep up with their workforce. They will be the employers we are benchmarking against in the coming years.
You can read the full 7th Annual State of Nursing Report here.
If you’re a nurse or technician looking to take control of your career and access Incredible Health’s suite of services for free, support is available here.
If you’re a healthcare leader looking for better ways to hire permanent healthcare workers through our marketplace or AI voice agents, find out more here.
