Few industries are more critical to humanity than healthcare, and few require more of it. Yet healthcare workers are adopting generative AI faster than nearly any other part of the U.S. workforce while reporting lower leadership confidence, less fulfillment from leading, and falling trust in their managers and companies.

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The gap between those trends is not a gap in the humanity of the people doing the work. It is connected to the conditions surrounding it.

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This brief examines where humanity is showing up in healthcare right now and where it is wearing thin. Drawing on up to 10,000 weighted responses from the idealis Pulse of the U.S. Workforce in partnership with CivicScience, it makes the case that the trust gap is local rather than generalized, that the leadership pipeline is narrowing at the moment the industry needs it most, and that the capacity for repair is fully intact. It closes with four strategies for healthcare leaders, applicable to any leader watching the same pattern emerge in their own organization.

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