A new global AI survey offers further proof of the technology’s transformational role in relieving burnout.
The May 2026 survey of 1,823 clinicians across 25 countries, sponsored by Heidi, reveals 73% of clinicians believe AI is helping them sustain a longer, more manageable career, although 70% cite accuracy as their biggest concern.
While these data aren’t surprising, the lack of employer governance is. As many as 83% of clinicians, globally, are navigating AI entirely without guidance from their employer.
This doesn’t just underscore the fact that AI has moved from “nice to have” to “must have” among clinicians. It also raises bigger questions for healthcare leaders.
To what extent should clinicians’ experiences inform health leaders’ purchasing decisions? What concerns are keeping clinicians up at night and how is AI helping? Moreover, what do clinicians want in their AI care partners?
A Clinician Career Boost
AI’s evolution and introduction to the healthcare marketplace could not have come a moment too soon.
The World Health Organization estimates a projected shortfall of 11 million health workers by 2030, putting health systems under pressure to do more with less.
According to the Heidi global clinician survey, 86% of clinicians in 25 countries now use AI daily or several times a week. More than 8 in 10 also say their use has grown in the past twelve months, while fewer than 2% have never used it.
More than half of clinicians (58%) cite saving time on administrative duties as their main reason for using AI, especially tools like ambient AI scribes, which 70% of clinicians have adopted. This is a big deal, as 81% of clinicians surveyed attested to spending more than an hour per day on admin outside of direct patient care.
These data track with findings culled from similar studies: A recent report published in JAMA Network Open, for example, found that using ambient AI reduced burnout rates among ambulatory clinicians from 51.9% to 38.8% after just one month, freeing them from hours of after-hours charting.
Burgeoning AI Concerns
Perhaps stemming from multiple news stories involving AI, from patient privacy and data security lawsuits to debates on model accuracy, the majority of clinicians still have concerns about AI.
Seventy percent of respondents cited hallucination and accuracy as their top concern, as bad data can contribute to poor care and patient outcomes. Nearly as many respondents cited patient privacy (60%) as a chief concern, followed by over reliance (48%) and erosion of clinical judgement (41%). Regulatory uncertainty is a lingering fear among more than one out of three (37%) of survey respondents.
These data suggest that attribution, confidence indicators and audit trails are critical for any AI tool used by physicians.
Navigating the Clinician-Health Leader Disconnect
More than anything, the survey results are a direct call to action for healthcare leaders to invest in solutions that clinicians already know, love, and are benefitting from. It’s a call to action to do more to bridge the disconnect between clinical teams and IT leaders.
The fact that 8 out of 10 clinicians are navigating AI entirely alone suggests that health systems need to catch up to their workforce. This appears especially true in the US where the positive impact of AI on career sustainability was nearly 10% lower than the rest of the world. That may indicate that the US workforce is being held back more by long procurement processes.
Supporting clinicians by enabling them to spend more time with patients, and less time on documentation, starts at the top. Now is the time to approach AI with a physician-led mindset.
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