A new monthly column
- Artificial intelligence (AI) is already integrated into nursing practice, often in unseen ways, such as patient monitoring and medication alerts.
- This new column aims to help bedside nurses understand and use AI wisely and safely in their daily work, offering practical, evidence-based insights each month.
I RECENTLY SPENT SOME TIME thinking about a scenario I hear often from nurses across the country. A nurse uses their phone to type a patient question into ChatGPT, and gets a quick answer. Then they pause and ask, “Did I just violate HIPAA?” Meanwhile, a colleague retrieves nearly identical information from the hospital’s AI-embedded EHR—protected behind a firewall—and nobody gives it a second thought. Same question. Two different situations. And most nurses have no idea why one keeps them up at night and the other doesn’t.
That moment—that pause—is exactly why this column exists.
You’re already using AI
AI isn’t coming to nursing. It’s here, on our units, and part of how we monitor, assess, and care for patients. The early warning flag before a patient’s vitals visibly change? That’s AI. The medication alert at the dispensing cabinet? Also AI.
The question isn’t, “Will nurses work alongside AI?” It’s, “Will they understand it well enough to use it wisely and safely?” This column aims to answer that question one topic at a time.
This column is for you—the nurse in direct patient care. Not for the informaticist, researcher, or administrator. I’m writing it for nurses with about 15 minutes a month to engage with this topic and want to learn something they can use in their next shift.
A new standard for AI content in nursing
AI can fabricate. Any nurse who’s typed a clinical question into a public AI tool has likely received an answer that sounded completely authoritative and was completely wrong. AI systems can generate citations to journal articles that don’t exist and present fiction with the confidence of a board-certified specialist. In the AI world, this is called hallucination. In nursing, it’s a patient safety issue. And no matter what AI tool a nurse uses, under ANA’s Code of Ethics for Nurses and Nursing Scope and Standards of Practice, the nurse holds sole accountability for all clinical decisions and actions.
Each column will have a fact-check date—when every reference was actually opened, read, and confirmed to exist in CINAHL or PubMed/MEDLINE. This is the standard I hold myself to, and I believe it’s the standard nursing deserves.
Six columns, six ideas
Here’s what we’ll explore together in upcoming columns. For more details, visit bit.ly/ANJ-AI-Bedside.
Column 1 — What’s already here
Column 2 — Reading the alert
Column 3 — AI and the future of your medication cart
Column 4 — When AI makes things up
Column 5 — Your patient may know more than you think
Column 6 — Paid, free, and who’s watching
Why American Nurse Journal, why now?
The journal has always understood something other publications sometimes miss: Nurses at the bedside aren’t healthcare consumers. They’re its engine. They’re the reason patients go home. They’re the profession’s conscience, muscle, and future.
AI is transforming healthcare faster than most published nursing content can keep up. This column exists to close that gap. Not by turning nurses into technologists but by giving them the knowledge they need to stay in command of the tools they use, to protect their patients from the risks those tools carry, and to advocate for a future where technology serves nursing rather than the other way around.
Roy L. Simpson is a nurse informatician with 5 decades of experience at the intersection of nursing and technology. He’s a professor, co-director, and assistant dean for AI education at the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
American Nurse Journal. 2026; 21(9). Doi: 10.51256/ANJ092613
Key words: AI, artificial intelligence
