National Nurses Week: What Nurses Are Teaching Us About Ambient AI

This week is National Nurses Week—a moment to reflect, recognize, and uplift the voices of those who hold our healthcare system together. Nurses are there at every stage of a patient's journey, providing compassionate, continuous care. Their service deserves not only celebration—but deeper, sustained support.

At Nabla, we’re using this week to not just say thank you, but to spotlight the challenges nurses face—and show just how committed we are to building an AI assistant that truly supports them.

The Nursing Burden Is Growing

With 4.7 million registered nurses in the U.S., they are the largest group of healthcare professionals in the country. Yet, they are being stretched thin by a system that hasn’t kept up with the increasing complexity of their roles.

Nurses face growing demands:

• The rise of virtual nursing, home-based care, and interdisciplinary teams
• A growing patient population managing chronic conditions
• A rapidly expanding need for Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs)—projected to grow 38% by 2032

But as their responsibilities expand, the tools to support them haven’t. Documentation, in particular, remains a major source of burnout and inefficiency.

• 61% of U.S. nurses report symptoms of burnout
• 25% are considering leaving the profession
• An estimated $16,736 in turnover cost per nurse, per hospital, per year

Their workflows are distinct from physicians’ and require equally distinct solutions. Generic tech tools often fail to capture the dynamic, real-time nature of nursing care.

The Challenge of Nurse Documentation

For Nurses, documentation isn’t just about compliance—it’s how they:

• Ensure continuity of care across shifts and teams
• Track critical observations and patient education
• Support billing and insurance requirements
• Feed into hospital-wide analytics that shape quality and operations

But this documentation is often complex and inefficient. Manual flowsheets, dropdown-heavy EHRs, and siloed systems make every shift more about clicks than care. 

Much like other clinicians, nurses spend a staggering amount of time documenting: 25–41% of their time. To make things worse, this documentation is often redundant with physicians’ and across systems. Another example of how technology that is supposed to help just adds to the burden.

Adapting Ambient AI to Fit Nurse Workflows

At Nabla, we’ve been working closely with nurses from our partner provider organizations to better understand what our ambient AI could do for them.

Our ambient AI assistant is now being adapted—with input directly from nurses themselves—to support their unique documentation needs.

We’ve developed tailored customizations to help nurses get started with Nabla, including:

• Templates for care management, phone triage, and telephonic assessments
• Contextual after-visit summaries for patient education
• AI-powered dictation at the cursor, inside any application
• Vitals intake support, auto-populating into the EHR based on verbal documentation

Early adoption is promising—13% of Nabla’s active users are nurses, and that number is growing fast.

Nurses on Nabla

We’re thrilled to see so many nurses already finding value in Nabla. Some of our first nursing-focused features are already helping ease documentation, supporting nurse workflows and improving care management.

We’ve begun adapting our ambient AI assistant for nurses at several healthcare provider organizations, including CVS Health, University of Iowa Health Care, Carle Health, Denver Health, Tia Health and many more. With over 8,500 nurses using Nabla, the results so far have been incredibly promising. 

Here’s what some of the nurses in the field have shared:

• "Nabla has not only increased nurses' engagement with members, but also increased their productivity and general happiness.” - Nursing Manager 
• "I've never seen a tool so universally well-received by nurses. It actually has improved team morale." - Nursing Manager 
• "I am absolutely delighted with Nabla. It lifts the administrative burden off my shoulders, saving me a lot of time." - Nurse Practitioner 
• "I would dread a day where I had to see patients without using Nabla." Nurse Practitioner 
• “I’m not letting my doctor NOT use Nabla. It makes ALL of our lives easier.” - Registered Nurse

To every nurse who’s used Nabla, offered feedback, or simply shared how they work: thank you. You're helping us build an AI assistant that not only eases the burden of documentation, but helps restore the joy of clinical practice—for everyone.