Nurses Will Lead the AI Revolution in Health Care
By: American Nurses Association
Rest assured nurses – technology will support our profession, not replace it
Artificial intelligence (AI) is impacting the provision of health care as innovations such as robotics are launched into a variety of patient care settings.
Today, robots can perform basic nursing functions such as ambulation support, vital sign measurement, medication administration, and infectious disease protocols. Back in the lab, researchers are creating robots that can go even further—help people drive, impact suicide rates, support clinical telehealth applications, and more.
Sure, nursing roles are changing — but not the importance of nurses.
Research suggests that between 8% and 16% of nursing time is spent on non-nursing activities that could – and should – be delegated to others. Robots can lend a hand! Robot support will give back this time so nurses can spend more of it with their patients.
Nancy Robert, PhD, a former executive with the American Nurses Association, drew from the experience of nurses at Yale New Haven Hospital to analyze AI’s impact on nursing. In a recent article, she offered some tips for introducing new algorithms into nursing practice:
- Encourage a growth mindset across the organization, preparing teams to learn new ways to gather and use patient data and information.
- Integrate tools into existing practices based on front-line provider experiences.
- Make sure tools are easy to use and that interpretation of outputs is intuitive.
- Show how technology tools improve patient care and allow nurses to spend more time at the bedside and gain a better understanding of the patient’s illness and needs.
With their front-line experience, technology management, and high-touch profession, nurses are far from headed for obsolescence, according to Dr. Robert. “Absolutely not—quite the opposite is occurring. Nurses are actively engaged in the creation and use of robots designed for patient care and older adult support. The robots are viewed as assistants that can help nurses at the bedside or in the community.”
Dr. Robert says nurses will become the information integrator, health coach, and deliverer of human caring—all supported by AI technologies, not replaced by them.
Attention Nurse Innovators! Do you have a great idea to improve patient safety or outcomes? Nominations are now open for the 2nd Annual ANA Innovation Awards. One nurse and one nurse-led team will win up to $50,000 to support translational research, development, prototyping, production, testing and implementation of their innovation. The nomination deadline is January 15, 2020, so hurry and submit your star nurses today!
Read “How artificial intelligence is changing nursing” by Robert, Nancy PhD, MBA-DSS, BSN In Nursing Management: September 2019 – Volume 50 – Issue 9 – p 30–39
doi: 10.1097/01.NUMA.0000578988.56622.21
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