National Nurses United president shares state of nursing in 2026

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National Nurses United President Mary Turner has been a nurse since 1996.

She served on the federal government’s Covid-19 Health Equity Task Force under former President Joe Biden, and she currently works in the ICU at 363-bed North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale, Minnesota. As one of the NNU's elected presidents on its Council of Presidents, she represents 225,000 nurses.

Through it all, Turner subscribes to one mantra: “Save one life, you’re a hero. Save 100 lives, you’re a nurse.”

She spoke with Healthcare Brew about the state of nursing in 2026.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What are your biggest priorities for nursing this year?

You could say staffing, staffing, staffing because big corporate healthcare is forever pushing us to do more with less. And when I say more with less, I mean more patients with less staff. And this is probably one of the No. 1 reasons—besides workplace violence—that nurses are leaving the bedside. That’s why National Nurses United has federal legislation to mandate a minimal registered nurse to patient ratio.

Let’s face it, healthcare is the new frontier of wealth. Consolidation is getting to be a real big problem…whenever this kind of consolidation goes on, we have done research that it means higher hospital charges and worse conditions for nurses.

How has nursing bounced back since Covid?

A lot of systems did what we call crisis staffing during the pandemic, and unfortunately, they liked it so much that they continue to try to do that same staffing after the pandemic.

I started at the bedside in nursing in 1996, and I had eight patients on a neuro floor at night. But at least two or three of them could make their own bed and bring their own tray back to the kitchen, meaning the acuity was such that patients stayed in the hospital for three to five days. Now you only go to the hospital if you’re almost in ICU status…But then there’s been no decrease in the amount of patients we’re expected to take.

How do you see new technology like AI being used in hospitals?

Critical thinking skills are paramount to nursing, so I have a real problem with a system that is going to potentially come in and do our thinking for us, and we’re just supposed to say yes to that.

It’s the beginning of, “It’s not the nurse who composes the end of night note, it’s a machine or AI that composes it.” Here’s the problem: We’ve heard of stories of AI hallucinating, not writing down accurate information.

We’re not against technology, but we’re against technology that isn’t tested and doesn’t use our input to begin with. And say you institute it and we find out it’s not going to work. Do we have the power to say no? We need to be able to assess it and see if it’s actually going to be safe and it’s actually going to help us. And right now we don’t necessarily have that power.