Today marks the first day of Nurses Week 2024 — an annual commitment established by the American Nurses Association (ANA) to recognize the invaluable contributions of nurses.

This year's theme, "Nurses Make the Difference," coincides with the ongoing efforts of C-suite leaders to stabilize their nursing workforces. Despite significant time and resource investments, overall RN turnover remains too high and first-year turnover is particularly challenging. As a result, nursing leaders are understandably concerned about the RN workforce shortage and focused on addressing urgent challenges.

As nursing leaders navigate the challenges facing their workforces, it is vital for them to provide support and guidance. Here are three key opportunities nursing leaders can leverage in 2024 and beyond. 

1. Prioritize making improvements to nursing work environments

The workforce crisis has highlighted the undeniable difference nurses make in care teams and the overall success of their organizations. Nurses' contributions extend far beyond patient care — they play a central part in driving the success of healthcare organizations, influencing patient outcomes and satisfaction, and maintaining operational excellence.

It is crucial that hospitals and health systems recognize their importance by prioritizing improvements to nurses' work environments. This includes ensuring adequate staffing levels, manageable workloads, and access to necessary emotional health and wellbeing resources. By investing in nurses' work environments, we can enhance job satisfaction, reduce burnout, and improve patient safety and quality of care.

We've put together resources to help healthcare leaders honor nurses by making meaningful impacts in their work environments:

• 3 underlying causes of nurse recruitment and retention challenges
• 5 ongoing challenges of the workforce crisis — and what to do about them
• How Allegheny Health Network's Blended Nursing Model Addresses Staffing Shortages

2. Deploy AI and technology to streamline workflows

Nurse workflows have become inundated with repetitive administrative tasks that detract from their clinical training. In an era of technological advancements, artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize nursing workflows. By leveraging AI-powered tools, nurses can streamline administrative tasks, allowing them to focus more on direct patient care. For instance, AI-assisted triaging, automated vital sign data entry, and clinical decision support can augment nursing workflows, thereby freeing up valuable time for nurses to spend with their patients.

While AI is well-positioned to support nurses, it should not be a replacement for nurses. AI can't comprehensively fulfill a nurse's full scope of practice — nursing is much more than completing tasks, as it involves building relationships and critical thinking. Nurses and their unique expertise make a difference in patient care.

When leaders are thinking about implementing AI and other technologies, it is crucial to include nurses in selecting and implementing technology that will impact their day-to-day work. Nurses should actively be involved in tech decision-making and implementation if we want those investments to succeed.

While leaders should not leverage technology to replace nurses, they should use it to help nurses practice at the top of their licenses. Here are a few resources to help leaders understand how technology can streamline workflows and address workforce challenges:

• AI nurses? Inside Nvidia, Hippocratic AI's new partnership
• 3 ways AI can help nurses
• How technology can help solve the workforce crisis

3. Leverage virtual nursing to ease workforce shortage pain points

Virtual nursing offers a transformative solution that not only addresses a shortage of nurses but also provides crucial support to novice nurses. By offloading administrative tasks or delegating specific care responsibilities to a virtual nurse, bedside nurses receive more time for direct patient interaction.

Additionally, through virtual platforms, novice nurses can collaborate with experienced mentors, seek guidance, and receive real-time feedback. This virtual support system helps bridge the experience gap and empowers novice nurses to gain confidence and competence in their practice. We compiled a list of resources to help leaders understand the benefits of virtual nursing, with guidance on how to implement a virtual nursing program:

• A detailed look at the top 2 models for virtual nursing care
• Virtual nursing: What it is, and why we need it
• Your how-to guide for implementing a virtual nursing program

Ultimately, nurse leaders shouldn't act alone in addressing these concerns — other members of the C-suite at hospitals and health systems need to lend their support as well. The best way to do this is to give nursing leaders the ability to implement innovative solutions to best support their nurses. To learn more about how health systems can help address nursing leaders' concerns, read our take on what health systems should know about nurse leaders' priorities.

On May 9, join us for a transformative webinar that challenges the conventional wisdom on leadership development. Also, tune into Radio Advisory on May 7 for our podcast episode celebrating Nurses Week.