First all-inclusive study of the healthcare workforce finds clinicians remain committed to care, but staffing, workload and leadership gaps threaten future readiness
DALLAS, Sept. 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- AMN Healthcare today released its 2026 Healthcare Workforce Outlook Survey, a comprehensive study examining the health, stability and future readiness of the healthcare workforce from the boardroom to the bedside.
Based on responses from 4,040 healthcare professionals across nine leadership and frontline roles, the survey reveals a workforce that remains committed to caring for patients but is operating under significant structural strain. The findings also identify a persistent divide between how healthcare leaders view organizational conditions and how frontline workers experience them.
The survey introduces the Healthcare Workforce Outlook Index, a composite measure that assesses workforce health across five dimensions: employee engagement, organizational health, leadership and support, staffing confidence, and future readiness. The overall index score is 38%, with none of the five dimensions exceeding 50%. Employee engagement is the highest-scoring dimension at 48%, while future readiness is the lowest at 29%. The 19-point difference indicates that healthcare workers remain moderately engaged today but are considerably less confident in the workforce's ability to meet future demands.
"One of the most encouraging findings is that healthcare professionals remain deeply committed to caring for patients, which gives our industry a strong foundation to build on," said Cary Grace, President and CEO of AMN Healthcare. "The opportunity now is to translate that commitment into a workforce experience that can be sustained. When leaders combine better workforce intelligence with meaningful frontline input and clear accountability, we can build a workforce that is better prepared for the future."
Together, the five index dimensions show how invested employees are in their organizations, whether organizations have the resources and staffing needed to deliver care, how effectively leaders support their people, and how prepared the workforce is for future demand.
"The index gives healthcare leaders a new way to understand where their workforce is stable, where it is strained and where action is most urgent," Grace said. "The findings also reinforce that staffing, leadership, workload and professional development cannot be addressed as separate issues. Sustainable progress requires an integrated workforce strategy."
Among the survey's key findings:
- A significant leadership perception gap exists. While 58% of executives rate organizational leadership as effective, only 28% of frontline workers agree.
- Professional commitment remains strong, but employer loyalty is weaker. Seventy-nine percent of nurses intend to remain in nursing, while only 51% plan to stay with their current employer, creating a 28-point loyalty gap.
- Nurses face particularly acute workforce strain. Only 18% of nurses consider current staffing levels adequate and 41% report satisfaction with their workload. Nurses recorded the lowest scores of all survey participant groups across each of the five workforce indices.
- Frontline professionals report widespread staffing-related care disruptions. Eighty-five percent of nurses, 75% of allied health professionals and 72% of physicians report staffing-related care disruptions at some frequency, reinforcing the need to consider staffing as a care-quality and clinical risk issue.
The findings indicate that healthcare organizations cannot address workforce challenges through isolated initiatives. The report identifies several priorities for healthcare leaders, including creating sustainable workloads, establishing structured feedback loops between leadership and frontline teams, strengthening recruitment and staffing models, improving workforce data visibility, investing in career development and adapting strategies to the needs of different roles and organization sizes.
The complete 2026 Healthcare Workforce Outlook Survey report is available here.
Survey Methodology
AMN Healthcare conducted the online survey from Feb. 24 to March 31, 2026. The survey collected responses from 4,040 participants, including 947 clients, 2,889 candidates and 204 respondents in other healthcare categories. Leadership respondents represented six areas: senior executive, finance, human resources, technology, clinical leadership and patient care. Frontline respondents included nurses, allied health professionals and physicians working across permanent, travel, per diem, locum tenens and contract employment arrangements. Respondents represented hospitals and health systems of different sizes, as well as clinics, ambulatory networks, home health, academia and post-acute care settings.
About AMN Healthcare
AMN Healthcare is the leader and innovator in total talent solutions for health care, bringing together the people, processes and technology to deliver better care. Through a steadfast partnership approach, we solve the most pressing workforce challenges to enable better clinical outcomes and access to care. In 2025, our health care professionals reached more than 13 million patients at more than 2,300 health care systems, including 93% of the top health care systems nationwide. We provide a comprehensive network of quality health care professionals and deliver a fully integrated and customizable suite of workforce technologies.
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SOURCE AMN Healthcare Services, Inc.
