As a nurse who specialises in informatics, it is clear that teaching nursing students about artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more important. The emergence of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools in recent months means that students are more aware of AI and now have practical digital tools they can use that are driven by advanced algorithms. Yet many students do not appreciate the benefits, limitations, and risks of AI. No doubt patients are also starting to use AI-based tools, and algorithms already influence many everyday technologies such as content we see on social media, internet search engine results, and personal virtual assistants like Siri on the iPhone or Alexa on Amazon devices.
Some colleagues and I published a systematic review of AI in the nursing and midwifery professions recently, and I presented this work at Sigma’s 33rd International Nursing Research Congress in 2022. We found a lot of research studies conducted by nurses who were using machine learning algorithms or natural language processing (NLP) in many areas of nursing, including clinical practice and education. Many studies were in the early stages of developing and validating predictive models using AI algorithms to identify patients at risk of various problems such as sepsis, falls, and pain. The studies that centred on nursing education used AI algorithms to predict student attrition from nursing courses, academic failure rates, and graduation and completion rates.
There was one study about how nurses could learn to use an echocardiogram with AI-assisted software. Our review also found a number of limitations and risks related to AI such as algorithmic bias which can be caused by poor-quality data and the need for clinicians to interpret the results of predictive models to make sure they are clinically relevant. Mistrust in AI-based technologies was also reported given the lack of transparency in how some algorithms work, and there was a concern AI could be used to supersede clinical or managerial decision-making.
Given that many nurses and other colleagues are developing and applying algorithms to health, education, and other datasets, and that there are many limitations and risks of these advanced computational techniques, it is important that we teach nursing students and practising nurses about AI. I am developing curricula on AI for nursing programmes at King’s College London in the United Kingdom. Our Master of Science in Adult Nursing is a pre-registration programme that supports people who have a bachelor’s degree to retrain as a nurse and gain a postgraduate qualification. For the coming year, I will be teaching these students about digital health including educational content on AI and how algorithms are being used in healthcare.
Subsequently, I will focus on our Bachelor of Science in Nursing programme and use a nursing informatics competency framework that I developed to integrate AI curricula into the undergraduate nursing programme at King’s College London. This should ensure that our nursing students graduate with better digital literacy skills so they can understand AI and how to adopt AI-based technologies in their professional practice.
Here are some of my resources based on this pedagogical work:
- I wrote a short editorial on how to teach nursing students about AI and another short article on predictive analytics in nursing education.
- A colleague and I recorded a webinar for the Nursing Times recently, where we discussed artificial intelligence tools in nursing education.
- I recently published an article in the Nursing Times discussing the strengths and weaknesses of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT in nursing education. This will be followed shortly by a second article on the opportunities and threats of generative AI as we undertook a SWOT analysis of these new digital tools.
- Partnering with Sigma, I presented a webinar where I discuss AI in nursing in detail.
- Finally, King’ College London have a free online training programme called Innovation Scholars which has a range of introductory self-directed courses on data science and AI such as how to programme in Python, the fundamentals of natural language processing, deep learning, and lots more. If you would like to learn more about artificial intelligence, then this may be the online course for you!
I hope these are helpful for nurse educators who want to create AI curricula to help students learn about this emerging and important trend in informatics.
Siobhán O’Connor, PhD, BSc, BSc, RN, CIMA CBA, is a Senior Lecturer at King’s College London, United Kingdom, and a member of Sigma’s Phi Mu Chapter.