How leaders rework systems to retain nurses

Hospitals are in a bind. As workforce shortages deepen and pay pressures mount, health systems are increasingly turning to technology to help retain their nurses. Many are piloting virtual nursing initiatives, ambient documentation and other AI-enabled tools designed to ease workloads.

But ask chief nursing informatics officers where they are seeing results right now, and the answers are more straightforward. The biggest impact, they say, is coming from removing the small daily frustrations that make nurses’ jobs harder than they need to be.

At Philadelphia-based Jefferson Health, CNIO Colleen Mallozzi, RN, has spent the past year examining how nurses use the electronic health record. Her team found unnecessarily complex flowsheets, cluttered order sets and alerts that had lost their effectiveness. They streamlined documentation, reduced required fields and cleaned up pathways to make the system easier to navigate.

“Right now, retention isn’t about the obvious plays — virtual nursing, ambient, AI — at least not yet,” Ms. Mallozzi told Becker’s. “Fewer clicks and smoother navigation mean more time with patients—and that’s what supports nurses’ well-being and keeps them here.”

Her approach reflects a shift happening across many health systems: before investing heavily in new tools, hospitals are reworking the digital infrastructure nurses rely on every day. At St. Petersburg, Fla.-based Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, CNIO Aruna Jagdeo, BSN, RN, said her team recently overhauled documentation workflows to remove redundancy and speed up routine charting. They have integrated bedside equipment to reduce manual data entry and started using real-time staffing data to help managers advocate for support on the floor.

The changes are not flashy, Ms. Jagdeo said, but they are meaningful. By cutting down on inefficient tasks, the hospital hopes to give nurses more time to focus on patient care.

Some leaders are also looking ahead to a new generation of tools. At Charleston, S.C.-based Roper St. Francis CNIO Jared Houck, RN, pointed to the potential of “smart rooms” — hospital rooms equipped with sensors, ambient technologies and real-time data connections that can automate parts of documentation and patient monitoring. The technology is still emerging, but Houck believes it could fundamentally change the way nurses deliver care.

“Combining AI-driven ambient and computer vision technologies, integrated sensors, real-time EHR data and intelligent automations together will redefine how nurses deliver care and how the patient experiences it,” he said.

For now, though, the most immediate gains are measured in minutes saved: fewer clicks, a workflow without workarounds, a system that helps rather than hinders. In a profession stretched thin, those changes can make a difference — both in how nurses work and whether they choose to stay.

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