The New York nurses replaced by AI: 'It should concern every patient who cares about quality of care'
Last edited Mon Jul 13, 2026, 11:11 AM - Edit history (2)
Source: Guardian
After nearly four decades in her job, Shuler is one of 12 nurses who was laid off Sunday after being replaced with AI-powered software, according to the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), which represents nurses at the hospital.
-snip-
"NNU nurses, like the nurses at Montefiore, have been on the frontlines of fighting hospital employers' efforts to force unregulated and untested AI into patient care settings," said Jamie Brown, a registered nurse and president of NNU. "Nurses know from experience that hospital employers will find any opportunity to cut costs and cut corners on patient care and nurse staffing."
The layoffs at Montefiore come in the wake of a massive nurses strike across several hospitals in New York City in January 2026. The new union contracts written after the strikes included safeguards against AI.
-snip-
"We are outraged about these layoffs because these dedicated nurses are being replaced by AI," said Kalathil in a statement. "This is a violation of the contract that we recently won by going on strike. It should also concern every practitioner and patient who cares about the future of healthcare and the quality of care they receive."
-snip-
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/13/nurses-new-york-ai
More at the link. No paywall.
EDITING to recommend that everyone read the COMPLETE article, since it isn't particularly long, and isn't paywalled.
And I probably need to add some other background here.
Registered nurses' jobs can be clinical or non-clinical, but the expertise of a nursing degree is still required for both. Clinical nurses provide direct medical care to patients. Non-clinical nurses do work that is more administrative, but again, a nursing degree is still required for expertise. I'd guess - and this is strictly a guess - that plenty of nurses have done both, and in small clinics and hospitals might do both regularly.
The hospital that laid off these nurses, replacing them with AI, is arguing that this was permissible because it was a nonclinical program involving paperwork.
The union says this was a violation of its most recent contract. And I'd bet that it was, since I doubt their negotiators would have accepted language allowing non-clinical nurses to be fired just because their jobs include some paperwork. Doctors do paperwork as well.
The hospital is probably hoping to get away with this, without too much of a backlash, if the public can be convinced non-clinical nurses, whose jobs have always required expertise and degrees in nursing, can be replaced by AI without affecting patient care.
= new reply since forum marked as read
It's actually DANGEROUS. Everyone will tend to believe the documentation...unless their
own experience red flags the AI hallucinations!
This is exactly how serious, (sometimes fatal) med errors occur. 
Futurologists have predicted that many American workers will be replaced in factory settings, and other jobs such as truck drivers, are already being replaced by robots. But they've also said that some jobs will never be replaced by robots, e.g., plumbers and electricians, firefighters, and many service workers such as nurses and doctors. Some doctors in the research sciences will be replaced, but not primary care doctors or nurses.
Also, not every job will be replaced by robots, because it will depend on the cost of replacing those workers vs. what their hourly wages are. It would cost more to replace fast-food servers with robots, than to just have human workers and pay them minimum wages. The workers that will be replaced by robots are the ones making way above minimum wage.
Don't forget that these decisions will be made, and are being made, solely on the basis of profitability ... a CEO will decide to invest in robots to replace the highly-paid professional employees because it will save the CEO money in the long run. How this will impact the workers who lose their jobs is of no concern to the CEOs.
Most of our country is unprepared to accept the social upheaval that is coming in the next 10 years.
