Why nurses are demanding a voice in AI in healthcare

At the HLTH conference, and most other recent health conferences, leaders of tech companies, hospitals and drug manufacturers have been talking about AI and its impact on the industry.

Jing Wang, left, and Rebecca Love are leading a program at Florida State University to ensure nurses are playing a role in the development of AI in healthcare.

Nursing leaders are stepping up to be part of that conversation. Rebecca Love and Jing Wang are aiming to help shape that conversation and to ensure that nurses aren’t left behind.

In fact, they are looking to ensure that nurses are playing a leading role in the use and growth of AI in healthcare.

Wang, dean of the Florida State University College of Nursing, is leading the nation’s first master’s nursing program on AI in healthcare. Love, a nursing leader, entrepreneur and author, is joining Florida State’s College of Nursing to create the Nursing and Artificial Intelligence Innovation Consortium.

In a conversation at the HLTH conference last week, Love and Wang talked about why it’s so important for nurses to be involved with the development of AI solutions. And they warned of the consequences if nurses are excluded, for nurses and the healthcare industry as a whole.

Wang sees the Florida State consortium as playing an important role in the future of AI in healthcare.

“We would like to really bring academic partners, health system partners, startups, the nursing innovator community all together to say, here is the nursing voice for AI and innovation,” Wang says.

Love says AI has the potential to help nurses do their job better, and help healthcare organizations provide better patient care, if nurses are part of developing and utilizing these new technologies.

“We believe that there is tremendous power and opportunity for AI to support the nursing workforce in ways that we have not yet seen,” Love says.

But she says she doesn’t want to see healthcare organizations and AI companies “isolate our profession from what could be perhaps the most transformative advancements for our profession that we've seen in 100 years.”

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‘Nurses know AI’

At healthcare conferences, it’s common to hear leaders say that AI won’t replace the role of doctors. But some nursing leaders are concerned that providers could look at AI tools as substitutes for the roles of nursing, which they say would be a grave mistake.

“Many of those who come into the space of AI have not paid attention enough to a national narrative, of stepping in and saying, ‘AI is going to make it so any Tom, Dick or Harry can walk off the street, get an AI instruction and do the job of the nurse.’ What that has shown is the inherent misunderstanding of the role of nursing,” Love says.

“I think why we have decided to take action now, as opposed to wait a year from now, as more of these devices come out, is to take better control of that national narrative, to say, AI is not going to replace nursing, but it could potentially augment nursing and provide better infrastructure and support and investment into a profession where technology has largely been absent in investing in historically,” Love added.

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Wang has cringed at proposals to use generative AI tools to answer patient questions and replace nurses by using technology that costs less than $10 an hour. And she notes, there’s little conversation about AI tools being used as inexpensive substitutes for the roles of physicians.

“We can't be replaced by a chatbot,” Wang says.

“We have never been able to replace the nurse,” Love concurs. “We fundamentally don't believe you ever will be. And the truth is, what we can't allow is for AI to further potentially deteriorate that workforce without engaging with us first and foremost.”

Nurses are very familiar with AI, so utilizing their knowledge and experience is paramount, Wang says.

“Nurses know AI,” she says. “Nurses can harness AI to improve patient life and to improve nursing workflows and solve a lot of problems in healthcare.”

“We really want to be a strong voice, to be there to say, AI has tremendous power to support nurses, and we recognize that power,” she added. “We're not saying: no AI. Nurses are about AI embracing AI to improve patient life, improve the quality of life for our patients. Who can do this better than nurses, being the most trusted profession.”

Wang also says the role of nurses shouldn’t be simply evaluating an AI tool after it has been developed and is being tested.

“We want to be very proactive, as the nursing community, all together to say, we want to be at the cutting edge. We want to be the front runner of artificial intelligence,” Wang says. “We don't just want to be the end users in the end, because we know what needs to happen to help nurses, to take nurses, not away from the bedside, but back to the bedside, away from the computer.”

• Read more: How hospitals can help nurses, and themselves

‘Get this right the first time’

In the past, other electronic tools have been developed without sufficient input from nurses, including electronic health record systems.

Many nurses and doctors point to administrative headaches with electronic health systems as a key factor in burnout. Love doesn’t want to see similar missteps with the advent of AI solutions, and that’s why she argues for more involvement from nurses.

“The truth is we're solving for physicians with AI at a much greater rate than we are solving for nursing,” Love says. “But the truth is, we cannot make that mistake, because if we burn out nurses in the process of solving for physicians, we have not solved anything in healthcare. And in fact, we probably undermined it further. And that's the responsibility of the AI industry to get that right, because they have the responsibility to make sure that whatever they're producing doesn't further destroy the profession of nursing. And that is what is at risk.”

Too often, nurses haven’t been consulted in the development and adoption of new technology solutions in healthcare.

Wang and Love say that can’t happen again, but they are concerned that nurses haven’t been engaged in crafting new AI solutions.“We do not have the chance or the opportunity to blunder this once or twice. We have to get this right the first time,” Love says.

“Engage with nurses first, establish the practices that are going to matter, solve the problems nurses need,” she continues. “And that is why we're taking action today, so that we don't relive the flawed history of what has led, transitionally, to the largest amount of burnout of the nursing workforce, because we've been so poor in addressing the nursing voice in the development of technology.”

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