The ASHHRA Podcast
The ASHHRA Podcast is the definitive audio briefing for healthcare HR leaders navigating what’s next.
Hosted by Bo Brabo and Luke Carignan, this weekly podcast explores the forces reshaping the healthcare workforce, from talent shortages and leadership burnout to data-driven HR strategy, labor relations, and policy shifts that impact care delivery.
Each episode features candid conversations with CHROs, senior executives, and industry change-makers who are solving real problems inside hospitals and health systems right now. No theory, no fluff, just practical insight from leaders in the arena.
Listeners gain clarity on complex workforce challenges, early signals on emerging trends, and grounded perspectives that help bridge strategy and people operations. Whether you lead HR for a health system, support workforce strategy, or influence organizational culture, this podcast equips you to make better decisions with confidence.
New episodes drop weekly, with timely news updates, deep-dive conversations, and forward-looking insights designed for healthcare HR leaders preparing for 2026 and beyond.
The ASHHRA Podcast
#217 - New AI Can Now End Healthcare Burnout
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What AI Can and Can't Fix About Healthcare Worker Burnout
Featuring Dr. Rich Safeer, Chief Medical Director of Employee Health & Well-Being, Johns Hopkins Medicine
Two in five healthcare workers say their jobs feel unsustainable. AI is sitting right in the middle of the burnout crisis, the staffing shortage, and the well-being conversation. The question isn't whether it will change healthcare work — it already is. The question is whether your organization uses it to squeeze more out of your workforce or to finally give them their lives back.
Dr. Rich Safeer returns to the ASHHRA Podcast to answer that question with clarity, nuance, and a perspective shaped by decades at the intersection of medicine, leadership, and workforce well-being.
🤖 AI as a Well-Being Tool — If Leaders Choose It AI-powered ambient documentation is already reducing clinician "pajama time" — the hours spent charting after shift instead of resting. Dr. Safeer is direct: these tools should help healthcare workers live more normal, balanced lives — not unlock capacity to load more patients onto already strained providers. Healthcare workers can vote with their feet. If your system adopts AI to extract more, they will go to the one across the street that uses it to give back.
👁️ Shadow AI as a Workforce Signal 62% of healthcare IT leaders have observed staff using unsanctioned AI tools. Dr. Safeer reframes this not as a compliance failure but as a signal — employees finding relief where their organization hasn't provided it yet. Treat it like that before you treat it like a policy violation.
💊 HeartMath, EAPs & Getting to Root Causes 80% of healthcare workers say existing well-being solutions are ineffective. Dr. Safeer connects that failure to programs that don't address root causes — autonomy, flexibility, purpose, and trust. Johns Hopkins has integrated HeartMath, a research-backed breathing and mindfulness practice, directly into the workflow. The lesson: meet people where they are.
📖 Resource A Cure for the Common Company by Dr. Rich Safeer: https://amzn.to/4bOFTPt
Well-being is not a perk. It is the infrastructure that makes every other healthcare workforce strategy possible.
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