Recommendations for safely navigating AI in nursing

The Australian College of Nursing (ACN) has released a new position statement on artificial intelligence (AI) with an aim to provide nurses an understanding of the core principles to safely navigate using AI, recognising the pivotal and important role of AI and acknowledging the role AI will play in the contemporary healthcare setting in the future.

While the college advocates for the patient-centred, ethical and safe use of AI to support and enhance nursing practice, education and administration, they emphasised that the use of related technologies and solutions relies on several principles and needs to be supported by strong governance.

These principles, suggests ACN, include:

• Nurses must always remain the decision-maker and continue to use their nursing knowledge and critical thinking in the care they provide to their patients and the broader community.
• Nurses must be cognisant when generative AI is used in nursing. Be cognisant of generative AI in digital tools they use to provide care, including applications with decision support, predictive tools and automation.
• Nurses must consider the ethical implications of data and algorithmic bias, which may embed gender, race and other inequalities and inequities due to the inherent limitations of generative AI across various populations.
• Nurses must engage in education on different types of AI and how this can impact the provision of care and understanding of generative AI’s safe and ethical applications.
   

ACN Interim CEO Emeritus Professor Leanne Boyd FACN said, “While AI has many potential benefits in health care, appropriate regulations and safeguards must be embedded to not compromise patient safety, nursing care delivery or the profession more broadly.

“AI has the potential to significantly reduce the often-repetitive tasks that nurses perform, as well as assist in solving both our current and future workforce challenges.”

The college has made the following recommendations for managing AI in health care:

• AI education at all levels of nursing, from undergraduate to advanced CPD levels, to ensure a comprehensive understanding of AI products, algorithmic decision-making and the legal liabilities associated with automated decisions (Reddy et al., 2020).
• The National Nursing and Midwifery Digital Health Capability Framework (Australian Digital Health Agency, 2020) and A National Policy Roadmap for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare (AAAiH, 2023) should be integrated into nursing curricula to facilitate this education effectively. The Australian College of Nursing offers a Graduate Certificate in Digital Health (ACN, 2024).
• Nursing informaticians must be integral to all aspects of AI application, adhering to Australian standards and management protocols. Healthcare organisations must ensure nurses’ active involvement in governance models, emphasising principles of fairness, transparency, accountability and trustworthiness.
• Nurses must play a central role in designing, implementing and evaluating AI applications, ensuring that ethical and practical considerations align with nursing requirements. AI should only be integrated into nursing practice when ratified evidence demonstrates improved patient outcomes. It is imperative to emphasise that AI is a tool to enhance nursing care and treatment, not a replacement for critical thinking.
• AI must be developed within a robust safety framework to implement accreditation to assess AI safety and quality practice standards and integrate the national AI ethical framework to support value-based health care.
• Nursing should actively participate in developing data governance models based on principles of integrity, transparency, auditability, accountability, stewardship, checks and balances, standardisation and change management (The Data Governance Institute, 2023).

Image credit: iStock.com/Jacob Wackerhausen