Artificial intelligence (AI) in nursing is becoming increasingly popular, and despite concerns, its potential is limitless. Learn more about how AI is being successfully introduced into nursing to help nurses and enhance patient care and about the future of AI in nursing.
Artificial intelligence makes it possible for a computer to reason or make judgement similar to or even better than humans.
There have been discussions of using robots to work and interact in clinical nursing contexts, and nursing schools already use chatbots to create fake simulations that mirror real-life nurse/patient interactions.
Contrary to concerns, AI health technologies (AIHTs) are meant to assist nursing students and staff members and enhance patient care.
AI is popular
Applications for ChatGPT have multiplied since it began assisting the general public in producing written responses to nearly any question. Nursing schools are using the chatbot to make fictitious simulations of nurse-patient interactions.
Electronic medical records (EMRs) are already widely used in healthcare, used by 88% of office-based clinics and 96% of general acute care hospitals, many of which include AI capabilities.
But there needs to be more clarification about when and how to employ AI and how it might be used in patient care. True enough, not all AI is embraced by the nursing profession. There might be a steep learning curve, particularly for nurse educators, and some nurses may be reluctant to adopt new technologies.
The role of nursing is starting to shift considerably thanks to AI and technology. Nurse executives from around the United States participated in a panel discussion in 2022 about artificial intelligence and the future of nursing.
Two recent use cases that could be beneficial to nursing practice have gained attention:
An emergency room patient triage system
A real-time health condition detection method uses information from the electronic health record (EHR), such as the Rothman Index.
Nurses and other healthcare professionals can access clinical data about patients in real time using clinical decision support systems like KATE and the Rothman Index. KATE’s AI skills can aid emergency room nurses in effective patient triage, ensuring that the higher-risk patients receive the appropriate care as soon as possible.
Nursing and AI in the Future
New insights provided by AI technology can aid in making better healthcare decisions. According to Kelley, some of the push toward AI calls on the nursing profession to consider what might be feasible rather than concentrating on how it would change.
Here are some ideas for successfully implementing AI in nursing:
Through classes and workshops, nurse educators should become more familiar with the idea and fundamentals of AI. Nursing leadership must encourage nurse educators to implement the necessary curriculum modifications to make the nurses ready to use these new technologies.
Include competencies in informatics and digital health technologies across the board in nursing education.
Allow nurses to participate in the creation of AIHTs.
Nursing informatics should be included in the nursing curriculum. Courses on genomics and AI algorithms, the ethical implications of AI, the analysis and ramifications of enormous data sets, systems thinking, critical thinking, and data literacy are also recommended, according to the study.
