As health systems continue to make headway on AI implementation, they are navigating the complex challenge of getting physicians and nurses on board with adopting AI-enabled workflows. Based on conversations with physician and nursing executives during The Health Management Academy’s Spring Forums, we created a discussion guide outlining their challenges and potential solutions for getting buy-in.

Four strategies for getting your care teams on board with AI:

Create an open dialogue with clear messaging on the rationale of your AI use cases.

• Provide clear, transparent messaging on how your organization is approaching AI implementation and the reasoning for the use cases you chose.

• Leverage your CHROs, CPEs, and CNEs to develop and execute the strategy for organizational messaging. This reinforces a system-wide approach to implementation.

Bring nurses to the table.

• Get nursing leaders to advocate for more nursing-specific AI use cases and have nursing stakeholders included in governance.

• Make sure frontline nurses are involved in piloting nursing-centric solutions so you can ensure their administrative burdens are being alleviated.

Start with high-impact, low-risk solutions (and don’t automatically increase workload).

• Begin with AI applications that have a significant positive impact but minimal risk. Gradually expanding adoption based on successful outcomes will build employees’ confidence using new tech.

• However, be careful not to automatically increase workload to respond to any initial productivity gains or you may risk driving frustration.

Overinvest in building AI literacy through training.

• Survey results show that there is still substantial skepticism about AI among physicians and nurses. Many don’t understand how much AI already underpins the work they are already doing (e.g., with falls risk assessments; sepsis alerts).

• Educating your clinical workforce about AI improves the likelihood that your health system will fully realize the ROI of AI, as pilots show clinician training time positively correlates with improved productivity from the tools.

Make sure employees have resources they can rely on beyond the training stage. This includes leveraging your industry partner to provide technical support for employees and incorporating AI education in professional development and onboarding curricula.