Burnout and an aging workforce remain significant issues for healthcare employers. Over the past decades, the industry has faced various challenges related to advancement opportunities, training, compensation, and scheduling flexibility. However, there has been a notable increase in investment and innovative strategies aimed at addressing these problems.
Despite changes brought by technology and artificial intelligence in some roles, healthcare continues to show strong job growth. Nearly 700,000 jobs were added in the first eleven months of 2025. Daniel Zhao, chief economist for Glassdoor, stated: “We fully expect that healthcare will continue to grow and add jobs almost regardless of what the rest of the economy does.”
One prominent trend is the increased use of technology to help reduce burnout among healthcare workers. Employers are turning to new tools that address administrative burdens. At Children’s Mercy in Kansas City, Missouri, an AI-powered program called the Helen App was introduced for nurses. The app allows nurses to request assistance with tasks such as supply delivery or patient admissions and discharges by routing requests directly to appropriate teams.
Dr. Alejandro Quiroga, president and CEO of Children’s Mercy, explained: “What we have done is offset a lot of the tasks that are not clinical. It has decreased the cognitive load for the nurses, improved the relationship between nurse and patients and saved nurses time — up to an hour per shift. We think that we can have improve that amount of time even further.”
Children’s Mercy developed this application specifically to help combat staff burnout among its nursing staff.
Further information can be found at Modern Healthcare.
