Working people across the United States regularly step up to help out our friends, neighbors and communities during these trying times. In our Service & Solidarity Spotlight series, we’ll showcase one of these stories every day. Here’s today’s story.
Thousands of nurses represented by National Nurses United (NNU) took part in rallies last week calling for the hospitals to prioritize safe staffing and patient protections against growing artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
These nationwide demonstrations were aimed at uplifting the broad shared concern among nurses over the current implementation of AI by hospital employers and policy regulators. In a survey released last year, NNU found that 50% of responders have seen their employer implement algorithmic systems to assess things like how ill the patient is and predict the number of hours of nursing care they will need. Of those nurses, 69% said the computer-generated measurements did not match their informed assessments and lacked consideration of important, complex social factors that were at play.
“[N]urses across the country are taking to the streets to let our communities know that in 2025, as in all years past, we are committed to providing the highest quality of care for every patient,” said Nancy Hagans, RN and a president of NNU, in a press release. “We will fight fearlessly against the profit-driven hospital industry, which seeks to undermine nursing care through unconscionable understaffing and reckless automation.”