Leveraging AI To Improve Clinician Wellbeing

Authors

Sophia Hill, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Roy Dumblauskas, University of Nebraska - LincolnFollow
Cooper Sheets, University of Nebraska - LincolnFollow
Zachary Wallenburg, University of Nebraska - LincolnFollow

Date of this Version

5-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Citation

Hill, S., Dumblauskas, R., Sheets, C., & Wallenburg, Z. 2024. Leveraging AI To Improve Clinician Wellbeing. Undergraduate Honors Thesis. University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Comments

Copyright Sophia Hill, Roy Dumblauskas, Cooper Sheets, and Zachary Wallenburg 2024

Abstract

Medical Solutions is one of the nation’s largest healthcare talent ecosystems, connecting nurses and health clinicians with healthcare systems nationwide. Medical Solutions creates technologies for the healthcare staffing industry, enabling hospitals, clinicians, and recruiters to increase care. Medical Solutions’ products include an app for travel clinicians to search and apply for jobs, manage credentials, connect with recruiters, and a platform for hospitals to recruit, hire, retain, and manage clinicians. Traveling clinicians face unique challenges, including increased stress, isolation, and burnout. Before this project, these issues were addressed through dialogues with recruiters, an increasingly complex strategy as the number of clinicians and recruiters grows.

To address this, the team developed an AI-driven mental wellbeing assistant for traveling clinicians employed by Medical Solutions. Delivered via a web application, a clinician can chat with the bot about their mental health and wellbeing. The bot then replies with a sympathetic tone, emphasizing active listening. It will defer clinicians to appropriate resources for their struggles, such as their Medical Solutions recruiter, using a retrieval-augmented generation system to incorporate Medical Solutions-specific data.

The solution’s goal is to reduce burnout and, consequently, turnover by providing an early intervention tool that can address some of the mental health needs of clinicians. As the AI assistant helps clinicians navigate their wellbeing, job satisfaction can improve while clinician burnout rates fall. This can also save costs associated with hiring and training new staff and increase satisfaction among the hospitals Medical Solutions serves.