AI and Patient Care

How Artificial Intelligence is Changing the Game for Nurses

With countless people’s well-being at stake, the healthcare industry is understandably at the forefront of developing technologies. Researchers are constantly looking for new ways to save lives, improve patient outcomes, and help healthcare facilities run more efficiently—and one of the biggest breakthroughs in recent history is the progression of artificial intelligence (AI).

AI is already a much bigger part of our lives than most people realize. According to Authority Hacker, as of November 2024, 77% of the devices in use feature some form of AI. However, as of November 2023, 52% of Americans are more concerned than excited about regularly using artificial intelligence. It’s important to consider the benefits of AI in addition to ethical dilemmas. As technology continues to develop, AI is poised to enable major breakthroughs in patient care and throughout the entire medical field.

In this article, we’ll take a detailed look at AI and its growing importance in healthcare. We’ll also cover how AI is relevant to nurses, how it can improve patient outcomes, and how it will enhance nursing efficiency. Learn how to become a Registered Nurse and explore the highest paying nursing jobs to see if this career path is right for you.

The Role of AI in Modern Healthcare

Although AI can’t replace the compassion, instincts, and communication skills of experienced nurses, AI tools will likely become an even bigger part of their daily routine in the near future. Artificial intelligence in healthcare has the potential to benefit patients, providers, and care facilities by streamlining certain processes and offering important new insights.

When many people think about artificial intelligence, they imagine the dystopian depictions they’ve seen in sci-fi movies. However, AI is currently much closer to a superpowered data processor than a sentient being that can solve complex problems. AI relies on massive data inputs to make analyses and recognize patterns, which makes it ideal for data-driven fields like healthcare.

Augmented Intelligence

In the medical field, many examples of artificial intelligence may be more accurately described as augmented intelligence, because its primary role is to help trained human providers make better-informed choices. By analyzing data from a wide range of sources, AI can help nurses become more efficient and effective in many aspects of their jobs.

In the coming years, expect to see AI applications in diagnostics, treatment, and administration. There are some current trends you can even spot today. According to Los Angeles Pacific University (LAPU), as of December 2023, AI is currently used to help diagnose patients, transcribe medical documents, accelerate drug discovery and development, and streamline administrative tasks. Some examples of AI technologies include machine learning, natural language processing, and rule-based expert systems.

How AI Is Enhancing Patient Care

AI is already in use throughout nursing and medicine, everywhere from diagnostics and decision-making to triage and patient monitoring. As health data becomes more robust and AI platforms become even more powerful and accessible, they’ll play an increasingly important role in patient care. Let’s look at a few ways AI is already making an impact for nurses and their patients.

Streamlining Administrative Tasks

From booking appointments to managing prescriptions to updating electronic health records (EHRs), there’s a significant amount of administrative work within nursing. According to the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN), as of November 2023, nurses spend about 40% of their time on documentation.

Using AI to automate or streamline more of these administrative tasks can give nurses more time and mental energy to focus on their patients. AI-assisted voice recognition and language processing technology can help nurses save significant amounts of time on documentation and reduce the inevitable inaccuracies that arise when making manual entries.

Improving Clinical Decision-Making

Because AI is able to process massive amounts of data so efficiently, AI-powered tools can provide nurses, physicians, and other providers with insights based on each individual patient’s health history, physiology, and even genetics. In many cases, this information can lead to earlier detection and more accurate diagnoses. It can also help nurses decide on an appropriate course of action if a patient’s condition takes a turn for the worse.

However, AI has its limits when it comes to making complicated clinical decisions. It’s not capable of understanding empathy or ethics, both of which are critical aspects of patient care. AI can also overlook rare or complicated cases, because it’s generally trained to spot the most common solution to any given problem. Even with how powerful AI platforms have become, there’s no replacement for the intuition and critical-thinking skills of a seasoned nurse.

Enhancing Patient Monitoring and Safety

AI technology is changing how nurses monitor their patients’ safety. By processing patient data from EHRs, wearable sensors, or smart monitoring devices, AI platforms can help identify potential complications and ensure nurses are ready to react to any adverse events.

AI-assisted patient monitoring technology is already in use throughout the medical industry. If you have exercise-tracking or crash-detection features on a smartwatch or smartphone, you’re using something similar! It can alert nurses to changes in vital signs, predict a patient’s likelihood of falling, and spot signs of a potential infection or other concerns. Predictive AI can also use health data to identify unique risks in each patient, enabling nurses to deliver more personalized treatment.

Supporting Patient Engagement and Education

Patients who want to actively participate in their own care have better health outcomes, and artificial intelligence has the potential to keep patients engaged by ensuring they can access the health information they need. AI chatbots and virtual assistants can be available around the clock, and provide personalized educational materials based on each patient’s health data, history, and preferences.

Many health conditions have frequently asked questions that come up among patients, and getting an instant response instead of having to wait until their provider’s office opens can relieve a lot of anxiety. AI-assisted apps and devices can also help patients stick with their treatment plans by offering reminders for medications or other home-care treatments. By helping patients understand their health and offering advice tailored to their needs, AI can encourage patients to remain engaged in their own healing.

AI in Nursing Education and Training

There are various opportunities to enhance nursing education with AI. For instance, personalized learning and AI-driven simulation tools can greatly help the educational process. According to the National Library of Medicine (NIH), “AI has the potential to supercharge simulation by offering scenarios that are realistic and tailored to students’ individual learning needs.”

Some examples include AI-enhanced robots instead of medical mannequins. Additionally, AI could be used in virtual reality simulations to emulate scenarios that are tough to access in the real world. Enhanced clinical judgment tools are another significant addition to training and education. The NIH has included the following examples for clinical judgment tools: “New AI-enhanced clinical decision support tools rapidly generate nursing diagnoses, calculate patient fall risk predictions, and develop decision trees to prevent catheter-associated urinary tract infections.”

When it comes to personalized learning, we are likely to see AI tutors that can provide students with individualized tutoring plans. As stated by the NIH, “AI tutors could walk students through simulated patient interviews or provide instantaneous feedback on assignments,” such as preparing clinical documentation, calculating medication dosages, etc.

Let’s take a closer look at a few of the most important ways artificial intelligence is poised to transform how we teach and train nurses.

1. AI-Enhanced Curriculum Development

To ensure each generation of nurses is better-prepared than the last, ongoing evaluation of training programs is an essential part of nursing education. Because AI-assisted platforms can process huge amounts of information at lightning speed, they have incredible potential to identify knowledge gaps, redundancies, or other opportunities for improvement in nursing curriculum. Analyzing curricula with the aid of AI can help teaching materials remain current in a fast-evolving healthcare industry.

AI also has a number of useful applications for educators. It has the potential to aid in developing lesson plans and test questions, and to provide significant time savings with grading assignments and other time-consuming tasks. By streamlining nursing educators’ workloads, AI-enhanced platforms can give them more opportunities to build personal connections with their students.

2. Personalized Learning and Adaptive Assessment

Learning styles vary significantly between individuals. Some people absorb material best through listening, while others need visual aids or hands-on experience to solidify certain concepts. One of the greatest challenges in any educational setting is adapting the material to suit different learning styles, and AI-assisted learning shows great promise in doing just that.

AI algorithms can help tailor educational content to individual students and their learning styles. For example, an auditory learner may listen to a verbal explanation, while a visual learner is shown a helpful infographic. By catering content to each student’s learning needs, it gives them the best chance to successfully retain the material. After all, when an on-duty nurse is responding to an emergency, it doesn’t matter how they learned which actions to take—just that they learned them in the first place!

Throughout the course of a nursing student’s education, AI-driven assessment platforms can also offer real-time feedback during assignments, quizzes, or tests. This can be highly useful in helping students master the material, as they receive tailored guidance while the subject is still top-of-mind, rather than waiting until their assignment is graded by an overworked instructor. And because spotting patterns is one of AI’s biggest strengths, it can help students discover any areas where they’re struggling, and connect them with the tutoring or study resources they need to stay on track.

3. Simulation and Virtual Reality (VR) Training

When it comes to staying calm in a challenging situation, there’s no substitute for experience. Encountering realistic clinical scenarios during their education prepares newly trained nurses to perform under pressure when they’re working in a real patient-care environment.

Immersive simulations are very effective in honing hands-on skills and clinical decision-making, and AI has the potential to make training platforms even more advantageous for nursing students. Artificial intelligence pairs perfectly with VR technology that places nursing students into a realistic clinical environment—complete with patients who may be anxious, in pain, or even unresponsive. “Smart” manikins are also becoming increasingly common in nursing schools, with AI-powered communication simulators that provide a nuanced and interactive hands-on training experience.

AI-powered platforms can introduce new variables and difficulty levels into training scenarios to develop nurses’ skills, instincts, and clinical reasoning abilities. AI can also expose nurses to rare scenarios or complications they may not otherwise encounter until several years into their careers. Training in realistic simulations without putting patients at risk helps nursing students build confidence and emotional resilience and prepares them for success during their supervised clinical rotations.

4. Predictive Analytics for Student Success

Whether it’s due to life circumstances or academic difficulties, many students with the potential to become great nurses need a little extra support during their education. AI-powered predictive analytics platforms can help identify students who may be at risk of dropping out and connect them with the resources they need to overcome their challenges.

By using AI algorithms to analyze data points like attendance, assignment participation, and access to tutoring resources, educational institutions can provide non-judgmental interventions that help students stay on track. Sometimes, a conversation with a trusted teacher or academic advisor is all it takes to remind someone they have options, and AI-assisted analytics can enable proactive outreach to students who might never ask for help otherwise.

Educational institutions that use analytics to keep students engaged in achieving their goals have likely experienced higher graduation rates and improved student retention. Empowering nursing students to succeed with the latest learning technology not only creates life-changing career opportunities, it’s a critical part of addressing the ongoing healthcare staffing shortage.

5. AI in Clinical Decision Support

Clinical decisions are made after considering all the available data, and AI has the potential to assist nurses in making better-informed care decisions by analyzing large quantities of patient information. AI-assisted clinical decision support systems have the potential to recommend next steps, calculate the odds of a patient’s condition deteriorating, or provide information about safety concerns.

These insights can help nurses develop their clinical decision-making skills, learn to connect the dots between various indicators, and reduce the risk of medication errors, misdiagnosis, or other common mistakes that can compromise patient safety. AI platforms can also integrate diagnostics and imaging data to help healthcare providers spot pathologies more easily.

Artificial intelligence can’t replace the expertise, instincts, and observation skills of experienced nurses. But it can provide them with powerful tools to help safeguard patients and maintain a safe and efficient care environment. As technology develops, AI and machine learning platforms continue to enable new ways for healthcare organizations to improve patient outcomes and better support their nursing staff.

Benefits of AI for Nurses

This probably goes without saying, but there are many benefits for nurses who use AI. Not only does it reduce time spent on routine tasks, but it allows nurses to focus more of their energy on patient care. In addition, it can improve the decision-making process and patient outcomes. You may not have realized this, but AI can even reduce nurse burnout by optimizing workflows. We need AI to help support the nursing workforce and empower the future of healthcare.

As AI becomes more powerful and better-trained, it’s all but certain to revolutionize the healthcare industry. From fine-tuned curricula and personalized learning experiences to realistic simulations and useful clinical tools, AI has the potential to help future generations of nurses train more effectively and provide higher-quality patient care.

Opportunities for Aspiring Nurses

Specialization in Emerging Fields

As the future of nursing takes shape, the healthcare industry is bound to see new career opportunities for nurses who keep their skills current. Modern medicine’s growing reliance on huge amounts of health data should lead to a rising demand for nursing informatics—a career that combines clinical expertise with technological prowess.

Advances in genomic science are also creating opportunities in genetic nursing, both in research labs and clinical environments. Genetics nurses help detect and treat hereditary conditions and use their advanced training to customize treatment plans and educate families about genetic health issues and risk factors.

Other emerging nursing specialties include public health nursing, forensic nursing, and nurses who specialize in disaster preparedness and response. All of these fields rely on the latest advances in science, technology, and data analytics—and the perspective of a trained healthcare provider.

Telehealth Nursing Careers

The rapid adoption of telehealth has led to expanding remote work opportunities for tech-savvy nurses. Delivering high-quality telehealth care requires a unique skill set—including learning new technology, effective digital-first communication, and adapting patient-assessment skills to a virtual platform.

Remote case management is a common career for telehealth nurses—often related to coordinating care for patients with chronic conditions. In this field, nurses provide education and support to help patients stick to their treatment plans, and determine when in-person follow-ups may be necessary.

Triage is another growing career in telehealth nursing, where nurses remotely provide initial patient assessments. Remote triage can help prioritize medical resources to keep facilities running smoothly and ensure each patient receives the appropriate care.

Leadership and Advocacy Roles

The experience and perspective nurses gain from years on the clinical floor are incredibly valuable in several leadership and advocacy roles. Their frontline experience is irreplaceable for creating policies and procedures that keep patients safe and encourage healthcare professionals to thrive.

From clinical supervisors to the executive suite, high-performing nurses have many potential paths to mentor their peers and move into leadership positions. Nurses can also move into advocacy roles like patient liaisons, public health policy advisors, and community health leaders. For nurses with leadership ambitions, getting involved in professional organizations is an excellent way to gain experience serving on leadership committees and contributing to policymaking efforts.

Global Health Initiatives

As our world becomes increasingly connected, nurses are a key part of global initiatives to address health inequities and promote public health. Nurses are almost always on the front lines of humanitarian and disaster-relief efforts, both of which will remain in demand as the world confronts the effects of a changing climate. Nurses are also essential for education and prevention efforts in under-served areas and for teaching communities how to do the most good with limited resources.

Nurses who want to get involved on the global scale can find volunteer opportunities through many professional groups or nonprofits–or seek out employment with international health organizations or government agencies.

Challenges and Ethical Considerations

While nurses certainly aren’t at risk of losing their jobs to AI, learning how to use AI healthcare technologies will be an important part of keeping their skills current. Nursing education programs will need to adapt their curriculum to reflect rapidly evolving healthcare technology. Similarly, healthcare organizations and employers will need to prioritize professional development programs to help their people make the transition to using more AI-based tools.

Implementing any new technology throughout a large organization is always a challenge, and AI can be a polarizing topic. Some nurses may be hesitant to embrace the growing use of AI in healthcare, whether it’s due to underlying concerns about job security or simply a reluctance to change the way they’ve been working. However, AI in nursing has the potential to drastically improve nurses’ ability to do their jobs, and there’s no replacing the human element of patient care that trained nurses provide.

When it comes to challenges and ethical considerations, it’s important that we pay attention to three things: overreliance on technology, AI algorithm bias, and privacy and security. Of course, there is a great need for human oversight to maintain a proper balance. Visit this article from the National Library of Medicine to learn more about the challenges and ethical considerations of AI in nursing education.

The Future of AI in Nursing

The ongoing adoption of AI in nursing will take many different forms. As we continue finding new ways to gather and analyze patient data, we’ll be able to train AI platforms to make better use of health information to aid nurses in caring for their patients.

In the near future, nurses will almost certainly see a significant increase in voice-assisted technology to streamline patient documentation. AI-based robotics may also be used for medication management or assisting with certain procedures. Nurses are also likely to see an increase in AI-assisted diagnostic methods that are less invasive to patients than current methods like biopsies.

As AI healthcare technology continues to develop, avoiding potential biases in data or algorithms must be a priority for product developers and programmers. Similarly, gathering input from the nurses who use AI applications in the real world will be essential to making them as useful—and ethical—as they can be.

Train for the Future of Nursing at Unitek College

AI is all but certain to transform healthcare—in ways we currently expect and likely several more that we don’t. When implemented properly, it can help nurses and physicians provide more equitable and effective care. Providers who can find the balance between embracing new technology and maintaining a human touch will be able to thrive as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly commonplace in healthcare.

As AI and healthcare technology continue to progress, aspiring nurses will benefit from a nursing education program that’s in touch with the latest advancements. At Unitek College, you can learn from experienced nurses and build hands-on skills in our immersive simulation labs. Due to our partnerships with healthcare organizations, you’ll have the opportunity to use some of the latest treatments and technologies during your clinical rotations.

Start by checking out our Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) program. All the nursing programs and pathways at Unitek are designed to equip you with the skills and knowledge needed for a successful nursing career.