AI exposure: Acute Care Nurses
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.
Reading this score
computedAt 17.4% of weighted task load, Acute Care Nurses sits at the 29th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 55.1% of what this role does is untouched, meaning current systems cannot produce that work at all, whatever the commercial incentive.
What holds the line here is verification cost. Across this occupation's 27 tasks it averages 2.69 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, checking the output costs more than producing it. Where an undetected error is expensive, dangerous or irreversible, the economics change. Someone has to verify the work, and verifying can cost as much as doing it. This is the friction most likely to fall as tools for checking improve.
The most exposed thing this job does is Assist patients in organizing their health care system activities, at 66.7%. The least is Adjust settings on patients' assistive devices, at 0.0%. A gap of 66.7% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within healthcare practitioner and technical occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 18.5% across the group's 89 roles, with 53 scoring higher. Being in an exposed family does not make a particular job exposed, and the reverse holds too.
What would move this score. Of 27 tasks, 5 are currently banded exposed, 12 assisted and 10 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take a change in who is permitted to sign the work, which is a question for regulators rather than for engineers. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 1.85 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 1.13 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 1.93 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 2.63 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.89 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 2.69 | 0-3 |
Task by task
27 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assist patients in organizing their health care system activities. | 66.7% | 33.3% | 0.0% | 3.65 | exposed |
| Document data related to patients' care, including assessment results, interventions, medications, patient responses, or treatment changes. | 53.3% | 46.7% | 0.0% | 4.57 | exposed |
| Perform administrative duties that facilitate admission, transfer, or discharge of patients. | 45.0% | 30.0% | 25.0% | 4.53 | exposed |
| Interpret information obtained from electrocardiograms (EKGs) or radiographs (x-rays). | 40.0% | 35.0% | 25.0% | 4.53 | exposed |
| Assess urgent and emergent health conditions, using both physiologically and technologically derived data. | 30.0% | 45.0% | 25.0% | 4.79 | assisted |
| Read current literature, talk with colleagues, and participate in professional organizations or conferences to keep abreast of developments in acute care. | 30.0% | 20.0% | 50.0% | 4.14 | exposed |
| Analyze the indications, contraindications, risk complications, and cost-benefit tradeoffs of therapeutic interventions. | 30.0% | 45.0% | 25.0% | 3.94 | assisted |
| Order, perform, or interpret the results of diagnostic tests and screening procedures based on assessment results, differential diagnoses, and knowledge about age, gender and health status of clients. | 29.2% | 33.3% | 37.5% | 4.18 | assisted |
| Diagnose acute or chronic conditions that could result in rapid physiological deterioration or life-threatening instability. | 20.0% | 55.0% | 25.0% | 4.87 | assisted |
| Distinguish between normal and abnormal developmental and age-related physiological and behavioral changes in acute, critical, and chronic illness. | 20.0% | 55.0% | 25.0% | 3.88 | assisted |
| Participate in the development of practice protocols. | 20.0% | 30.0% | 50.0% | 3.76 | assisted |
| Refer patients for specialty consultations or treatments. | 16.7% | 33.3% | 50.0% | 4.18 | assisted |
| Discuss illnesses and treatments with patients and family members. | 13.3% | 36.7% | 50.0% | 4.90 | assisted |
| Collaborate with members of multidisciplinary health care teams to plan, manage, or assess patient treatments. | 13.3% | 36.7% | 50.0% | 4.48 | assisted |
| Participate in patients' care meetings and conferences. | 13.3% | 36.7% | 50.0% | 4.24 | assisted |
| Collaborate with patients to plan for future health care needs or to coordinate transitions and referrals. | 13.3% | 36.7% | 50.0% | 4.06 | assisted |
| Prescribe medications and observe patients' reactions, modifying prescriptions as needed. | 11.2% | 26.2% | 62.5% | 4.50 | untouched |
| Assess the impact of illnesses or injuries on patients' health, function, growth, development, nutrition, sleep, rest, quality of life, or family, social and educational relationships. | 10.0% | 40.0% | 50.0% | 3.80 | assisted |
| Assess the needs of patients' family members or caregivers. | 5.0% | 20.0% | 75.0% | 4.38 | untouched |
| Provide formal and informal education to other staff members. | 5.0% | 20.0% | 75.0% | 4.10 | untouched |
| Treat wounds or superficial lacerations. | 1.7% | 23.3% | 75.0% | 4.16 | untouched |
| Administer blood and blood product transfusions or intravenous infusions, monitoring patients for adverse reactions. | 1.2% | 11.2% | 87.5% | 4.53 | untouched |
| Manage patients' pain relief and sedation by providing pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic interventions, monitoring patients' responses, and changing care plans accordingly. | 1.2% | 11.2% | 87.5% | 4.52 | untouched |
| Perform emergency medical procedures, such as basic cardiac life support (BLS), advanced cardiac life support (ACLS), and other condition-stabilizing interventions. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.80 | untouched |
| Set up, operate, or monitor invasive equipment and devices, such as colostomy or tracheotomy equipment, mechanical ventilators, catheters, gastrointestinal tubes, and central lines. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.63 | untouched |
| Obtain specimens or samples for laboratory work. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.52 | untouched |
| Adjust settings on patients' assistive devices, such as temporary pacemakers. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.69 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.
What this means in practice
Most of this work is not reachable by current systems, so the immediate pressure is on the administrative edges of the role rather than its core: the scheduling, the reporting, the written records. That is where time is recovered.