At health systems nationwide, nurses are using AI throughout their shifts to learn more about their patients, write notes more quickly, and keep families connected to their loved ones. Nurses at three organizations share their experiences:
A head start on end-of-shift notes—and 28,000 hours saved so far
At UNC Health, an academic health system in North Carolina, nurses use AI to help draft their end-of-shift care plan notes. Art brings together data nurses have documented over the course of the shift—such as assessments, interventions, and patient responses—and turns it into a structured summary the nurse can review and refine instead of writing the note from scratch.
Nurses at UNC Health started using AI for end-of-shift notes in two medical-surgical nursing units in August 2024. Today, it’s live in all inpatient units, and nurses have generated more than one million notes. AI-drafted notes were completed more than 55% faster than those written manually, saving more than 28,000 hours of note-writing time for nurses.
Faster chart review at start of shift
Nurses at Riverside Health in Virginia are using AI Inpatient Insights to bring recent events from across the patient’s stay into a single, concise summary. With Insights, Art gathers information like new orders, results, and changes in condition so nurses can see it at a glance. Riverside nurses who use Inpatient Insights spend 10% to 20% less time reviewing notes and results than their peers who don’t use the tool.
“If you didn’t work yesterday and want to get back up to speed on your patient, you can quickly review patient events over the last 36 hours,” Meg Atkins, MSN, RN-BC, chief nursing information officer at Riverside Health, said. “Nurses can advocate even better for patients when they know more.”
A new way for families to follow along
At WakeMed in Raleigh, North Carolina, nurses are using the same AI-generated end-of-shift note feature, with an additional benefit for patients’ families. With Art’s help, nurses are now able to write end-of-shift notes for every shift—and share the notes with patients and their loved ones.
After the feature went live, a nurse shared feedback from a patient’s family member: “I am my grandmother’s proxy but live in another state. I can sleep easier when I can read the nurse’s note and see that she had a good day.”
More nurses share their experiences with AI here.
