As the nursing landscape evolves, the art of caring remains critical

My mom was a nurse. Some of my most vivid childhood memories are of accompanying her on house calls, where she taught husbands and wives how to give insulin injections using an orange for practice. Growing up in Bayonne, N.J., my mother was the trusted soul of our community and the person everyone turned to when they had a problem. Watching her care for others, I knew I wanted to dedicate my life caring for people, too.

Nearly four decades later, healthcare looks very different. At Hackensack Meridian Health, a virtual nurse can support a bedside team from a remote workstation. Generative AI can help draft our nursing notes. And care can now be delivered directly in patients’ homes. The tools have changed in ways my mother would hardly recognize, but the heart of the work has not. The trusted soul at the bedside is still the same job she did at our kitchen table in Bayonne.

How health leaders choose to integrate technology will determine whether the next generation of nurses can maintain the art of caring. Too much of the conversation around AI in healthcare is framed in terms of productivity and cost savings. That mindset will drive nurses away. If health systems use AI primarily to cut labor costs instead of enhancing humanity in care delivery, we will only accelerate the burnout crisis we are trying to solve.

The better approach is to see technology as a way to create more time for patient connection, not less. Every AI tool and new virtual platform is only worth deploying if it gives bedside nurses more capacity to build meaningful connections with patients.

At HMH, our philosophy is not built around maintaining the status quo. We are not comfortable with mediocrity, and we are not interested in simply getting by. We believe the only way to redefine health care and improve outcomes for our patients is to innovate aggressively. But our approach to innovation is deliberate; we are deploying technology precisely where administrative burdens pull our nurses away from their patients.

Virtual nursing is one of the strongest examples of that philosophy in practice. We launched the program two years ago, and today we have 147 integrated beds across four hospitals where remote team members tag-team with bedside nurses on admission, discharge, education and documentation. With the help of the virtual team, the bedside nurse can spend more meaningful time with patients.

We are also using Epic’s generative AI to assist with nursing documentation, and our Hospital from Home program has cared for more than 2,000 patients since January 2024. Together, these innovations have helped expand nursing capacity, while safeguarding the human connection that must be at the center of care.

Amid a national nursing shortage and a burnout crisis, HMH’s 2025 nurse vacancy rate is 4.5%, compared with the national average of 9.6%. This result only happens when you deploy technology to protect the time nurses spend connecting with and caring for patients.

The human connection and the complex, real-time decision-making that happens at the bedside cannot be replaced by technology. The art of caring — empathy, compassion and an unwavering commitment to improving the patient experience — is what truly reaches patients in their most vulnerable moments. It is what our 9,000 nurses bring to every shift and every patient interaction. And it is something no chatbot or virtual platform will ever replace.

I encourage health system leaders to ask a simple question when evaluating new technology: Will this give our nurses more time to be human with patients, or will it pull them away from the bedside? Investments that pass that test will strengthen our workforce, improve outcomes and build more resilient systems of care.

For nurse leaders and aspiring nurses entering the profession, the message is equally important. Embrace the change. The tools will keep evolving. But the art of caring is ours to protect.

I draw on my nursing foundation every single day. Although I am no longer at the bedside, I am alongside our nurses at one of our sites weekly, because nursing is in my DNA. My “why” began at a kitchen table in Bayonne and it has never left me.

What happens within the four walls of our hospitals is only a small part of a patient’s story. We are committed to caring for our patients for the rest of their lives. The tools may continue to evolve, but every patient still needs what my mother gave her neighbors: trust, compassion and a nurse who knows how to care.

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