A new Tebra survey shows that AI tools like ChatGPT are delivering on their promise to reduce burnout across healthcare—but also introducing new risks as they become deeply embedded in daily work. Three in five healthcare employees say AI has eased burnout by streamlining documentation, note-taking, and patient communication. Adoption is especially strong in private practices, where 44% of staff use AI daily, effectively treating it as an extra team member in settings with limited resources.
However, the findings also reveal a growing psychological reliance on AI. Fourteen percent of respondents report feeling emotionally dependent on tools like ChatGPT, describing behaviors such as compulsive checking or anxiety when access is unavailable. Nearly half (47%) say they have used AI for emotional processing, while 27% admit to deleting inputs due to concerns about privacy or judgment. This suggests AI is increasingly serving not just as productivity software, but as an informal support system—despite limited safeguards and uneven awareness of mental health guardrails.
The survey highlights a critical operational concern as well: AI has become mission-critical infrastructure without the resilience planning typically applied to systems like EHRs. Thirteen percent of healthcare staff say an AI outage would be more stressful than an EHR crash, and 12% find it more disruptive than a colleague calling out sick. Yet only 27% report that their organization has a documented backup plan if AI tools go offline, exposing a new single point of failure in clinical and administrative workflows.
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