{"id":614586,"date":"2026-09-28T19:10:40","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T19:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/614586\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T19:10:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T19:10:40","slug":"how-ai-is-changing-the-field-of-nursing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/614586\/","title":{"rendered":"How AI is changing the field of nursing"},"content":{"rendered":"

A U.S. hospital was recently in the spotlight<\/a> after 12 nurses who were laid off said they were being replaced with artificial intelligence-powered software. The situation has raised concerns about hospitals automating and eliminating the jobs of nurses and other workers through AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a lot of us, there\u2019s this fear of the human narrative being erased,\u201d said Christine Rodriguez, assistant professor and associate dean of nursing impact at Yale School of\u00a0Nursing.<\/p>\n

To Rodriguez, nursing is both a science and an art. But with AI, she says the art is missing. AI can process data left and right, but nurses are the ones who center the human experience within health care. For Rodriguez, there is a role for AI within the field of nursing \u2014 to complement, not replace, the work of\u00a0nurses.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about being mindful if you\u2019re going to use the technology and what you\u2019re going to use it for to have the maximum impact,\u201d she\u00a0said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a Q&A, Rodriguez explains where AI belongs in health care, the ethical implications of using this technology, and how nursing schools can prepare students for the\u00a0future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The interview has been edited for length\u00a0and\u00a0clarity.<\/p>\n

How is AI changing the field of\u00a0nursing?<\/p>\n

Christine Rodriguez: One of the biggest trends we\u2019re seeing is the use of ambient AI scribes during patient visits, which transcribe and summarize patient-provider conversations in real time. Today, when we see our primary care providers, like a nurse practitioner, physician associate, or physician, the first question we get asked has changed. Now, it\u2019s not even an introduction or a greeting, but rather, \u201cIs it okay if I record this\u00a0visit?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Where does AI belong in health care, and where must human expertise remain\u00a0non-negotiable?<\/p>\n

Rodriguez: For me, AI needs to remain an extension of the decisions that we make as nurses. But when we rely on AI to be moral, when we rely on AI to speak to the lived experience of us as human beings, that is where AI fails. Empathy is essential in nursing because it shapes how nurses interact with patients, and it is closely connected to the ethical principle of justice, which requires us to treat people fairly, with dignity, and without bias. AI reduces the human experience. It reduces what empathy looks like. My favorite saying that I tell folks is, \u201cI can\u2019t wear the boots that you wear.\u201d I don\u2019t fit in those boots, but I certainly can pick up a pair of boots and walk right with you. That\u2019s essentially what we need to be doing as\u00a0nurses.<\/p>\n

AI is a tool to help us, but at the end of the day, human connection is completely different than what my connection is to an AI agent. It doesn\u2019t know the patient in front of me, what their lived experience is, what they\u2019re going through in life. To AI, patients are reduced to algorithmic biomedical setpoints rather than human beings. I\u2019m trying to view the patient as a person. My big fear with this technology is that people mistake it for something morally conscious, even though it flattens people into data representations and overlooks the depth of their lived complexity and\u00a0dignity<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A U.S. hospital was recently in the spotlight after 12 nurses who were laid off said they were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-614586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}