Integration of artificial intelligence in quality improvement projects for undergraduate nursing students: Enhancing nursing education through innovative applications

Background and objective: Nursing faculty have been hesitant to incorporate artificial intelligence into coursework due to various reasons, including the risk of affecting academic integrity and the potential for receiving inaccurate information. As nursing cohorts continue to grow, innovative approaches are needed to meet learning objectives; such as artificial intelligence. Incorporating artificial intelligence into group projects may increase responsible, ethical, and critical use of artificial intelligence and support programs in managing larger cohorts. The purpose of this initiative was to integrate artificial intelligence into the literature review process for a quality improvement group project to develop students’ ability to use artificial intelligence responsibly, ethically, and critically. This approach included validating the accuracy of artificial intelligence generated information.
Methods: This initiative was offered as an honors conversion opportunity within the Clinical Science II course to undergraduate nursing students. Six students opted to participate and were divided into two groups of three. Groups selected a topic related to the course content and aligned it with one of the Joint Commission national patient safety goals. Groups developed a clinical question, search strategy, conducted a literature review, and used artificial intelligence to identify evidence.
Results: Benefits of using artificial intelligence included the generation of creative ideas, provision of workflow steps, and a broad range of solutions. Challenges included a lack of concrete examples and a tendency for artificial intelligence generated information to be more practical than theoretical. Groups found artificial intelligence generated findings aligned with most articles from their literature reviews.
Conclusions: Incorporating the utilization of artificial intelligence into nursing curriculums can help programs monitor usage while managing growing cohorts. Allowing students to engage with artificial intelligence under guided instruction enhances understanding of its practical applications in clinical settings. This will better prepare students for real-world practice while ensuring academic integrity is maintained.