With 2024 research estimating that the market for artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare will reach around $613 billion by 2034, it is undeniable that AI holds immense potential to transform nearly every step of a clinician’s career—from education through clinical practice. While integrating AI use in the health system setting may grab headlines as it is being rolled out in a measured approach that can help patient outcomes—there is another area of the healthcare professional’s journey where, AI is quickly making a positive impact—the education of future clinical care team members.
In nursing education specifically, AI is being applied to help address some of the field’s most pressing challenges, such as the shortage of nursing faculty and clinical sites. In 2023, AACN reported that U.S. nursing schools turned away 65,766 qualified applications from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs, and in 2024, AACN continued to raise concerns about admission rates limiting the pool of potential nurse educators. These bottlenecks have only further contributed to the current workforce challenges facing the nursing profession. For these institutions there is a real opportunity to thoughtfully adopt AI in ways that can have impact across the nursing program—from minimizing the time faculty spend finishing work at home, to more aptly preparing students for the realities of frontline patient care.
Ensuring Successful Adoption of AI In Nursing Education
When leveraged efficiently, AI could help alleviate challenges nursing schools face by streamlining administrative tasks, which allows teachers to further enhance application-based learning opportunities that provide students with additional opportunities to develop their clinical judgement skills. However, as AI continues to expand in higher education, the potential for students and educators alike to rely on AI without critical evaluation poses significant risks. To effectively integrate AI into the curriculum administrators, nursing educators and students should make the following considerations:
- Ensure accessibility: AI tools should be accessible and affordable, while providing alternative learning modalities for students who may face barriers in using these technologies.
- Prepare educators: Invest in training programs for educators to ensure they can effectively integrate these new technologies and understand the benefits and limitations.
- Focus on continuous learning: Approach AI integration with a mindset of continuous learning and improvement, allowing for regular feedback (from both students and faculty) and iterative updates to keep pace with technological advancements.
- Prioritize educational outcomes: These tools need to enhance learning efficiency, rather than to simply give students the answers. This might look like leveraging AI to summarize key takeaways from lectures, identify relevant information from textbooks, or recommend tailored resources or study plans to address AI-analyzed knowledge gaps. Leveraging the evidence-based content at the heart of the pedagogy must always be part of the equation.
- Apply responsible use best practices: Nursing programs should work with students and faculty, so all parties understand that there are limitations, biases and hallucinations with all AI tools. Schools should use AI solutions that have diverse datasets and are continually being updated.
Personalizing the Classroom
One of the most welcomed applications of AI in nursing education from the perspective of educators is its ability to analyze student performance data and provide tailored remediation. By identifying areas where students struggle, AI can support streamlined remediation, helping educators assign specific learning plans that motivate students to sharpen their skills. This can allow faculty to focus on the overall class curriculum and flow, and ultimately to meet students where they are, based on real data and progression.
Thoughtful Integration for Sustainable Impacts
Educators and students must ultimately understand the potential limitations of AI, and remain diligent in their efforts to thoughtfully incorporate these tools into their specific settings. When used as a tool to support, rather than dominate the learning process, AI platforms can create a more personalized and thoughtful approach to the education of new nurses.
By strategically incorporating AI into nursing education, we can better prepare the next generation of nurses for the challenges and opportunities of modern healthcare— leading to improved patient outcomes, greater job satisfaction and sustainable careers for nurses. With thoughtful and deliberate efforts from across the nursing community, nursing education may even serve as a catalyst for other disciplines in the successful integration of AI in the coming years.
