It’s National Nurses Week, and the theme this year is the Power of Nurses. In my 36 years in nursing, I’ve watched that power show up in assisted living and memory care communities in many ways — in the voice of a nurse executive holding her ground in a room full of operations leaders, in the persistence of a nurse working through how to help a resident with dementia find relief from chronic pain, and in the handwritten notes of gratitude from family members and residents pinned on the board in a break room.
Most people have been cared for by a nurse at a moment of real vulnerability. They remember it. There’s a reason nurses have been ranked the most trusted profession for 25 consecutive years.
But that power is under pressure. Annual turnover for LPNs in assisted living runs at 38.6%, and 34.7% for RNs — numbers that have barely moved in years. Between 26% and 41% of a nurse’s shift is spent documenting. Workforce shortages are real, burnout is real, and we are asking nurses to carry more than the job is currently built to support.
Nursing can break your heart one moment and embolden it the next. Witnessing what nurses give — and watching the conditions erode their ability to give it — is what drives my commitment to protecting both: the person receiving care, and the nurse giving it.
The power of nursing care is measurable
In assisted living and memory care, nurses and direct care staff are the reason people move in. Residents arrive at some of the hardest moments of their lives — managing multiple health conditions, cognitive decline, and increasing care needs they can no longer meet at home.
The first year after moving in is the hardest. One in three residents is hospitalized, and more than four in ten make at least one emergency department visit.4
Then something shifts.
Research from the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care, conducted with NORC at the University of Chicago, tracked what happens to residents over time after moving in. In the top quartile of communities, they found that within about three months of move-in, resident health begins to stabilize. By year three, hospitalizations drop from 33% to 26%, emergency visits fall by 14%, and average Medicare costs drop by $7,200 per resident.4
Those aren’t just numbers. They represent residents who didn’t end up in the ER. People who stayed healthier, longer, in a place that felt like home.
That doesn’t happen on its own. It happens because a nurse or direct care staff noticed something early. Followed up. Made the call. Coordinated the care before a small change became a crisis.
That power isn’t sustainable without better systems
The answer to burnout and turnover isn’t asking nurses to work harder. It’s building systems that work better for them. There’s a real difference between a workflow that takes 16 clicks and one that takes 2. That gap, multiplied across a shift, a week, a career, is the difference between a nurse who has something left at the end of the day and one who doesn’t.
AI, built with nurses in mind, reduces that load — surfacing the right information at the right moment, flagging what needs attention before it becomes a crisis, and cutting documentation time so nurses can spend it on what only a nurse can do.
It also changes how care teams work together. Direct care staff are often first to notice a change: a resident who didn’t finish breakfast, a gait that’s slightly off, a mood that’s quieter than usual. That observation is only as useful as the system that carries it to the nurse who can act on it. The platforms doing this well surface direct care observations in real time, connecting their findings to the nurses faster and better.
What this means for you
You’re probably already using AI without calling it that — the flag on a weight change, the fall risk indicator, the med reminder. The pace is accelerating. Two years ago, most AI in senior living was happening behind the scenes. Today, platforms draft service plan language and generate shift summaries from documentation already entered.
That speed can feel disorienting. If you are feeling skeptical, that’s a fair and useful response — it’s a professional reflex that protects residents and your nursing practice. When a risk flag doesn’t match what you’re seeing at the bedside, that instinct matters. Algorithms are trained on populations. You know your residents. The goal isn’t to trust AI. It’s to use it well — knowing when to follow it, when to question it, and when to override it.
And, your observations matter to the people building these tools. “This fall risk score doesn’t account for how much better she moves after her morning meds” is something a developer can use. Note it, call your account rep and share it. The nurses who shape how these tools develop are the ones who tell us how to make it better.
Empowering nurses is on all of us
Listening, learning, and building better tools and systems to power nurses work is critical, and AI is giving us new capabilities to build more intuitive and responsive workflows.
But, empowering our nursing workforce is on all of us. Speaking up, advocating, and creating opportunities for others to discover how amazing a career in assisted living and memory care can be. Together, we can create a stronger and more stable workforce, which matters to all of us.
Being a nurse has brought so many gifts into my life — gifts of knowing, friendship, perspective, and love. I am grateful for you, celebrate you, and will keep working for you.
Happy Nurses Week!
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