Ensuring that AI tools aren’t called ‘nurse’ | Bills and Laws

The skinny

A bill in the Oregon state legislature would ensure that AI-powered tools can’t be labeled as “nurses.”

Oregon Rep. Travis Nelson, a registered nurse, has introduced a bill to bar AI tools from being labeled as a "nurse."

Sponsor

Oregon State Rep. Travis Nelson, a Democrat and a registered nurse, is the chief sponsor of the legislation.

Summary

Under the bill, an agent powered by artificial intelligence, or any “nonhuman entity”, may not use “nurse” in its title. The concise bill - it’s only one page - would also bar AI tolls from being labeled as “nursing aide”, “nursing assistant,” or “nurse practitioner.”

• Read more: Nurses embrace new technology, if it’s designed with them in mind

Analysis

The measure has gained attention and support in Oregon and beyond.

The Oregon House of Representatives has approved the legislation, sending it to the Oregon Senate. As Nelson has said, “Only licensed, educated humans should be called nurses.”

Nurses have denounced tech solutions that have been promoted as substitutes for nursing. One company initially touted the ability of its AI tool to handle the duties of nurses at $9 an hour, well below the typical compensation of nurses. The company has since modified its marketing.

Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, president of the American Nurses Association, has backed the bill, according to The Lund Report, a news organization based in Oregon. “The public needs to know if I call myself a ‘nurse’ what that entails,” Mensik Kennedy told The Lund Report. "Someone off the street can’t call themselves a nurse because there is an assumption of education and licensure.”

Nurses have increasingly been pushing to have a voice in the development of AI in healthcare. Jing Wang, dean of the Florida State University College of Nursing, is leading the nation’s first master’s nursing program on AI in healthcare. In an interview with Chief Healthcare Executive® at the HLTH conference last fall, she talked about the need to get nurses involved in developing AI solutions.

Wang also criticized tech companies touting AI tools as essential substitutes for nurses, saying that is as foolish as suggesting the technology can replace the roles of doctors.

“We want to change that narrative,” Wang said last fall. “We are a profession. We can't be placed by a chatbot.”

The question of AI technology and nursing gained fresh attention when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sought Senate approval to serve as secretary of the U.S. Health & Human Services Department. Testifying before the Senate Finance Committee in January, Kennedy said AI and telehealth can help expand care to areas with less access to doctors.

Kennedy hailed the Cleveland Clinic’s development of “an AI nurse that you cannot distinguish from a human being that has diagnosed as good as any doctor.” A Cleveland Clinic spokesperson told Becker’s Hospital Review that while the system is using AI technology in many areas, “we have not developed an AI nurse as part of our efforts.”

The Oregon Nurses Association has spoken out against AI tools being branded as replacements for nurses.

In a statement, the group said it is “concerned about the use of AI in nursing, particularly when AI is misrepresented as a substitute for qualified nurses. This threatens patient safety, undermines trust in healthcare, and diminishes the human aspects of nursing such as empathy, critical thinking, and decision-making.”

The National Nurses Union has introduced a “bill of rights” regarding the use of AI in healthcare, including rights to person-to-person care and for developers to demonstrate that AI tools are safe before being used to help with patient care.

“Nurses embrace, and regularly master, worker-centric technologies that complement bedside skills and improve quality of care for our patients,” the union said. “But we’re concerned about certain technologies that are being implemented into hospital and care settings that do neither.”