Building the Future of Nursing with Mayo Clinic
At Mayo Clinic, nurses have long been innovators.
More than a century ago, the Sisters of St. Francis approached the Mayo brothers with a bold idea: build a hospital together. That spirit of identifying a need and collaborating to solve it remains embedded in Mayo Clinic nursing.
Today, that same spirit is shaping the future of ambient nursing, through a co-development effort between Mayo Clinic and Abridge.
The Challenge
Documentation is essential to safe, high-quality care. It captures the patient’s story, supports continuity, and ensures accountability across the care team. But it also comes with weight.
“It’s not done if it hasn’t been documented,” said Heather, a bedside nurse at Mayo Clinic.
That reality means nearly everything a nurse does—assessments, medications, ambulation, education, care coordination—must be recorded.
“Documentation is the foundation of a quality medical record,” said Ryannon Frederick, Chief Nursing Officer at Mayo Clinic, “but we need to do so in a way that doesn’t pull attention away from patients.”
“Nurses tell us they’re spending a lot of time in documentation–often finding a computer screen and keyboard in between them and the patient,” said Cheristi Cognetta-Rieke, Vice Chair, Nursing – Enterprise Practice Transformation, at Mayo Clinic. “That takes away from the relationship-based care they really want to provide.”
Rather than make incremental tweaks, Mayo Clinic nursing leadership sought a different approach.
Moving Documentation Into the Background
The goal was not to eliminate documentation. It was to reimagine how it happens.
Through co-development with Abridge, Mayo Clinic nurses helped design an ambient documentation solution built specifically for nursing workflows.
At a high level, the solution works by securely capturing natural nurse–patient conversations during care. As nurses perform assessments and practice conversational care–verbalizing findings, education, and interventions–the system converts those conversations into structured draft documentation within the electronic health record.
Instead of documenting after the fact, nurses review and finalize a draft that reflects what was already discussed and assessed in real time.
From the beginning, nurses were not passive recipients of a new tool. They were involved in identifying the problem, shaping workflows, testing outputs, and iterating in real clinical settings.
“We call it For Nurses, By Nurses,” Frederick said. “We wanted to ensure any technology supported the kindness, compassion, and intelligence nurses bring to patient care.”
Building With Nurses, Not For Them
For Mayo Clinic, co-development was foundational.
“Mayo Clinic nurses are not passengers receiving tools and technology,” Cognetta–Rieke said. “Rather, they are pioneers, designing, developing, iterating, validating…and dreaming about what we need next.”
That philosophy was shared by Abridge.
“From the beginning, this wasn’t about adapting an existing solution,” said Reba Schenk, Vice President of Partner Experience at Abridge. “It was about listening to nurses describe their workflows, their challenges, and what meaningful support would look like. Co-development means building alongside nurses, not ahead of them.”
Bedside nurses felt that difference.
“Being asked to have an influence on something that’s going to impact our day-to-day practice–it feels great,” said Tara, a nurse at Mayo Clinic with nearly eight years of experience.
Heather, who volunteered early in the process, reflected on the experience: “Being able to have my voice heard and use it to help build the tool…has been really empowering.”
What Changes at the Bedside
For nurses, the impact shows up most clearly in the patient room. Before ambient documentation, charting was always present in the back of the mind. “It’s always on my mind,” Heather said. “There’s always that piece of, ‘I need to get this in the computer before I forget it.’”
With documentation supported in the background, that cognitive tension shifts. “It allows your brain to kind of relax,” Tara explained. “You can truly sit in the room with a patient and listen to their concerns without having that daunting thought of, ‘I have to document this.’”
As nurses verbalize their assessments–explaining lung sounds, wound findings, or medication plans–patients become more engaged.
“When we tell them what we’re hearing or seeing, that leads to questions,” Tara said. “The patient will ask, ‘What does that mean?’ And then you can educate them in real time.”
Instead of concentrating education at discharge, those conversations happen incrementally throughout the hospital stay.
“As a nurse, I know what it feels like to have documentation competing for your attention,” said Emily Stanforth, RN, Solutions Lead at Abridge. “The goal isn’t to change how nurses care for patients. It’s to support the natural rhythm of assessment and conversation, and let documentation follow that. Not interrupt it.”
Frederick shared one example that underscored the impact of conversational care: a daughter expressed confidence leaving the hospital to rest because she had heard her father’s nursing care explained out loud and understood the plan for his day. The transparency created reassurance.
Engagement as a Signal
One of the strongest early signals of success has been voluntary engagement.
On initial units where the solution was introduced, use by nurses was optional. Frederick noted that between 80% and 100% of nurses on those units adopted it within the first few days.
When access later expanded to 200 additional users, many available slots were filled within the first hour.
“They deeply understood that they were creating the future of nursing documentation,” Frederick said.
Nurses Leading the Future
Nurses bring unique insight to innovation. They spend more time with patients than any other clinician group. They translate complex medical information into understandable language.
“I believe nurses should be leading the future of healthcare,” Frederick said. “They see when things work well and when they don’t. Most importantly, they see the impact on the patient.”
At Mayo Clinic, that everyday innovation is supported and elevated. Creating space for nurses not only to care for patients, but to shape the systems that support that care. From the early formation of the hospital to today’s co-development of ambient documentation, the throughline remains clear: When nurses help design the future of care, technology becomes a support–not a barrier–to the nurse–patient relationship.
And that relationship remains at the heart of everything.
Visit Abridge for Nurses to learn more about ambient AI for nursing with Abridge.