Examining the Role of AI in Changing the Role of Nurses in Patient Care: Systematic Review

This review investigates the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) use and the role of nurses in patient care. AI exists in health care for clinical decision support, disease management, patient engagement, and operational improvement and will continue to grow in popularity, especially in the nursing field.

We aim to examine whether AI integration into nursing practice may have led to a change in the role of nurses in patient care.

To compile pertinent data on AI and nursing and their relationship, we conducted a thorough systematic review literature analysis using secondary data sources, including academic literature from the Scopus database, industry reports, and government publications. A total of 401 resources were reviewed, and 53 sources were ultimately included in the paper, comprising 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, 1 conference proceeding, and 2 reports. To categorize and find patterns in the data, we used thematic analysis to categorize the systematic literature review findings into 3 primary themes and 9 secondary themes. To demonstrate whether a role change existed or was forecasted to exist, case studies of AI applications and examples were also relied on.

The research shows that all health care practitioners will be impacted by the revolutionary technology known as AI. Nurses should be at the forefront of this technology and be empowered throughout the implementation process of any of its tools that may accelerate innovation, improve decision-making, automate and speed up processes, and save overall costs in nursing practice.

This study adds to the existing body of knowledge about the applications of AI in nursing and its consequences in changing the role of nurses in patient care. To further investigate the connection between AI and the role of nurses in patient care, future studies can use quantitative techniques based on recruiting nurses who have been involved in AI tool deployment-whether from a design aspect or operational use-and gathering empirical data for that purpose.