Senior nursing leaders have warned that the profession faces a “visibility issue” as artificial intelligence (AI) is developed and introduced into healthcare, urging nurses to take a leading role in shaping how the technology is used to support patient care.
Howard Catton, chief executive officer of the International Council of Nurses (ICN), addressed hundreds of delegates at the inaugural AI Nurses Network conference at King’s College London, saying nurses must be more vocal and assertive in discussions about AI that affect clinical practice and patient safety. He highlighted the scale of nursing worldwide — roughly 30 million practitioners — arguing this expertise is insufficiently reflected in current conversations about technological change.
“Nurses need to be bolder and communicate more loudly and more clearly,”
Catton framed the debate around opportunity and risk. He said the technological transformation offers significant potential benefits for service delivery and patient care but warned that nurses have too often been absent from the decisions that determine how AI systems are designed, governed and implemented. He stressed the importance of ensuring tools augment professional judgement rather than undermine accountability, clinical decision‑making or the human dimensions of care.
Concerns over governance, ethics and equality
The conference examined a range of issues central to national health systems: patient safety, ethical design, regulation, data protection and the potential for AI to affect health inequalities and environmental impact. Catton urged that nurses be involved at every stage of the lifecycle of new technologies — from conception and design to implementation and evaluation — to ensure systems are clinically relevant and safe.
Another speaker, Clare Cable, chief executive of the Burdett Trust for Nursing, emphasised the need for humility about current uncertainties around AI while keeping “humanity” central to decisions. Delegates discussed how nursing expertise in person‑centred care and systems thinking can inform safer, more equitable applications of AI in hospitals, community settings and public health.
Practical steps and priorities
Speakers and delegates identified several practical priorities to increase nursing influence over AI development. These included workforce education, strengthened governance frameworks, robust data protection, and inclusion of nursing perspectives in procurement and evaluation of AI tools. There was particular emphasis on the risk that technologies introduced without clinical input could distort workflows, shift accountability and exacerbate existing inequalities.
- Education: equipping nurses with AI literacy so they can evaluate tools and raise concerns;
- Governance: ensuring nurses sit on committees that set procurement and safety standards;
- Design input: involving frontline staff in co‑design to align tools with real clinical needs.
Catton emphasised that the profession’s absence from high‑level deliberations has left other senior figures and organisations discussing nursing practice “on our behalf”. He called for a shift that would allow nursing to shape AI “critically, ethically, practically and with courage”.
While the conference highlighted optimism about AI’s ability to improve efficiency and outcomes, delegates repeatedly returned to the need for clear regulation, accountability mechanisms and protections for patient confidentiality. The message was that technology should not replace the relational aspects of care that nursing embodies.
| Focus area | Aim |
|---|---|
| Workforce education | Build AI literacy among nurses |
| Governance | Include nurses in policy, procurement and safety oversight |
| Design & evaluation | Co‑design tools with clinicians; test for equity and safety |
The arguments advanced at the AI Nurses Network echo longstanding calls for clinician involvement in technology adoption: without meaningful nursing input, there is a risk that AI solutions will be misaligned with clinical realities and could inadvertently compromise safety or widen disparities. The conference sought to begin addressing that gap by building networks and a shared agenda for nursing leadership in AI.
Delegates left with a clear practical challenge: for nursing to move from being discussed to being central to decisions that will shape the future of care. Achieving that will require investment in skills, formal roles in governance and sustained engagement with regulators and technology developers.
