Will AI replace Acute Care Nurses?
AI reaches some of this job’s work, but most of it stays with people.
32/100
Moderate exposure
More exposed to AI than 49% of US workers.
- AI already used in
- 3% of the work
- As AI tools mature: up to
- 52% of the work
What the job involves
Provide advanced nursing care for patients with acute conditions such as heart attacks, respiratory distress syndrome, or shock. May care for pre- and post-operative patients or perform advanced, invasive diagnostic or therapeutic procedures.
Where AI reaches the work
The job’s main tasks, heaviest first, by how far AI reaches them.
Already happening(1)
- Assist patients in organizing their health care system activities.
Within reach(13)
- Discuss illnesses and treatments with patients and family members.
- Document data related to patients' care, including assessment results, interventions, medications, patient responses, or treatment changes.
- Assess urgent and emergent health conditions, using both physiologically and technologically derived data.
- Assess the needs of patients' family members or caregivers.
- Perform administrative duties that facilitate admission, transfer, or discharge of patients.
and 8 more
Out of reach(13)
- Perform emergency medical procedures, such as basic cardiac life support (BLS), advanced cardiac life support (ACLS), and other condition-stabilizing interventions.
- Administer blood and blood product transfusions or intravenous infusions, monitoring patients for adverse reactions.
- Obtain specimens or samples for laboratory work.
- Manage patients' pain relief and sedation by providing pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic interventions, monitoring patients' responses, and changing care plans accordingly.
- Collaborate with members of multidisciplinary health care teams to plan, manage, or assess patient treatments.
and 8 more
Also called
Acute Care Nurse · PCU RN (Progressive Care Unit Registered Nurse) · PCU RN · Cardiac Interventional Care Nurse · Cardiovascular ICU Nurse (Cardiovascular Intense Care Unit Nurse) · Cardiovascular Surgery Acute Care Nurse Practitioner (Cardiovascular Surgery ACNP) · Charge Nurse · DSU Nurse (Day Surgery Unit Nurse)
Related jobs
- Critical Care Nurses19/100
- Clinical Nurse Specialists32/100
- Registered Nurses39/100
- Advanced Practice Psychiatric Nurses44/100
- Paramedics19/100
What these numbers mean
The score is the share of this job’s work, weighted by how important and frequent each task is, that AI could do in half the time: tasks an AI model could do alone count in full, tasks that need software built on AI count half.
“AI already used” is the share of the work in tasks where people are recorded using AI today. “As AI tools mature” counts every task AI could halve, with or without extra software.
The percentile compares the score with every job’s, weighted by how many people in the US do each one. Exposure means AI could change how the work is done, not that the job goes away. These are estimates for the typical job, not predictions.
Sources
- O*NET 31.0 Database, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration
- GPTs are GPTs: Labor market impact potential of LLMs (task labels), Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin & Rock (2023), OpenAI and University of Pennsylvania
- Anthropic Economic Index: labor market impacts (task penetration), Anthropic
- Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (national and metropolitan areas), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics