When choosing a surgeon, most people look for years of experience, patient outcomes and tangible skills like steady hands and clear eyesight. Extending this process into other medical needs, people have learned to evaluate the clinical skills of doctors, nurses and support staff: Can they unwrap a needle and find a vein on the first try? Can they assess an X-ray or CT scan and provide an accurate diagnosis?
Medical schools and facility programs place a strong focus on clinical and technical skills, yet one of the biggest gaps in health care training may be surprising: it’s developing “soft skills” like empathy, adaptability, communication and teamwork. While not the only factors, these qualities can play an important role in supporting patient satisfaction, safety and long-term outcomes. The problem is, they’re often overlooked in traditional training programs because they’re hard to teach, let alone assess.
That’s where artificial intelligence (AI) is starting to change the game.
AI as a Bridge Between Clinical and Human Skills
With the guidance of human oversight, AI is already advancing clinical workflows, remote care delivery, diagnostics and administration in health care. For example, “always on” AI systems cleared by the FDA are being used in medical centers like Cedars‑Sinai and Yale New Haven to help radiologists prioritize critical cases more rapidly. AI-powered medical scribes are being used to lighten the documentation workload. The advent of AI-assisted surgery and AI-designed drugs — one in its infancy, the other embryonic — promise greater accuracy and efficacy.
AI is also enhancing the human side of health care by helping personnel build vital soft skills. SOPHIE, an AI-powered platform to help doctors better their communication skills with patients in serious illness care, has been successful in improving empathy and empowering patients. At the University of Arizona Health Sciences, researchers created AIMHEI, an AI coaching bot that evaluates how medical students interact with patients, offering targeted feedback to improve listening, clarity and compassion.
AI in Online Training for Health Care Professionals
Outside of clinical environments, web-based training is supplementing soft skill development. As health systems face change, growing complexity and staffing shortages, online education offers a flexible and scalable way to onboard new health care workers quickly and upskill existing staff. The effectiveness of these types of programs depends not just on accessibility, but also on how well training translates into real-world practice.
Virtual training providers such as MedCerts are rolling out AI-powered platforms that help students practice and be evaluated on essential interpersonal skills, while also building professional confidence.
Students engage with virtual patients through dynamic avatars, each with unique backstories and health conditions such as infections, high blood pressure or diabetes. These avatars respond in real time to student input, simulating natural, high-stakes patient interactions. Performance is scored (1-10) and paired with personalized narrative feedback. Essential soft skills like emotional intelligence, tone, clarity, ethical judgment and problem-solving are evaluated, identifying strengths and areas for improvement.
For Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) training, AI programs provide in-depth insights into how students perform in high-pressure, patient-facing situations. For mental health trainees, avatars simulate complex, sensitive conversations around depression, trauma and self-harm. Using large language model technology, avatars adapt their responses in real time to address student questions, offering critical preparation in a low-risk environment.
Addressing Health Care Staff Shortages Through Soft Skills Training
The health care industry is experiencing a significant shortage of workers, including CNAs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), CNA jobs are projected to grow by 4-5% from 2023 to 2033, with over 220,000 openings expected each year. Health care employers aren’t just looking for technical qualifications — they want candidates who can communicate effectively, demonstrate empathy and manage patient emotions under pressure. Some employers even say that soft skills matter the most.
Skills-based hiring, which is a recruitment approach that prioritizes a candidate’s abilities, aptitudes and competencies, is steadily becoming the new standard. According to a study from the Society for Human Resource Management, 73% of companies used skills-based hiring in 2023. This growing shift displaces traditional hiring that has long been focused on college degrees and lengthy work histories, instead taking a path that values the more human aspects of candidates.
AI-powered training, in both clinical and online environments, is filling that gap. Through technology that incorporates machine learning, neural linguistic programming and other tools, students experience a continuously improving training loop. Students don’t get canned responses — they engage in human-like dialogue with responsive AI, feeling fully immersed in real-life scenarios. To rephrase the medical aphorism: An ounce of preparation is worth a pound of cure.
By combining new technology with human-centered training, AI tools can help improve patient outcomes, even before a student step into a clinic.
