You’ve heard the name. ChatGPT.
Maybe you’ve asked your new robot friend a silly question to see if it works. Or perhaps you have already figured out ways to use it to streamline tasks in your personal or professional life.
“Plan my 3-day trip to Miami.”
“Give me a week’s worth of dinner ideas with these ingredients.”
“Write the resignation letter for my bedside nursing job.”
Regardless of the encounters you’ve had with ChatGPT, which is just one form of artificial intelligence (AI), there are numerous ways that other forms of artificial intelligence in nursing will change the remote nursing job landscape.
What is the Role of Artificial Intelligence in Nursing?
The AI revolution will be bigger than the internet, says Dr. Lana Feng, the CEO, and Co-Founder of Huma.AI. “ChatGPT reached 1 million users in 5 days, eclipsing any other application in history. The closest is Instagram, reaching 1 million users in 2.5 months”, says Feng.
According to Nursing, AI is “the ability of a machine to emulate intelligent human behavior.” Humans teach computers to learn from experience, improving accuracy over time through machine learning (ML).
As the healthcare industry implements AI, the nursing field has the potential to make massive changes. In the future, charting into electronic health records could be streamlined, nurses could monitor patients remotely, and predictive analytics could be even more adept at identifying disease risk factors. And that’s just scratching the surface.
How Will Artificial Intelligence Impact the Remote Nursing Job Market?
How AI impacts any company will depend on the company’s goals and internal workflows. Here are a few examples of what possibilities are out there.
Utilization Management & Utilization Review
What is it? Utilization review and management entails clinicians looking at patient documentation and determining if that patient’s insurance should cover health services or medications.
How could AI make a difference? AI could simplify insurance reviews by matching clinical documentation to the correct criteria or section of the member’s explanation of benefits. It could also automatically send denials for medical provider review based on a keyword or phrase in the case.
Telephonic Triage
What is it? Phone triage involves answering patient calls on specific health concerns and giving a treatment recommendation based on protocols and nursing judgment.
How could AI make a difference? AI could create a unique protocol based on the conservation between the nurse and the patient based on the patient’s subtle symptoms. In the future, AI could single-handedly conduct phone triage. At the end of the clinical pathway, it could connect the patient to a 911 operator, a patient scheduler, or send the patient home care advice, depending on their medical needs.
Remote Case Management
What is it? Case management is coordinating patient care for a patient population. Case managers check in on patient status, help coordinate their care, and conduct phone visits.
How could AI make a difference? Depending on their concerns, AI could bolster case managers through AI chatbots to connect patients to the appropriate caregiver or specialist. AI can also help nurse case managers automate appointments, medication reminders, and patient care plan changes.
Data abstraction
What is it? Data abstraction is how nurses extract and analyze data from patient medical records.
How could AI make a difference? AI could automate the process of data abstraction. Nurses will still be needed to monitor the AI for accuracy, as well as to make decisions on how healthcare businesses and the government use the data.
New and Expanded Job Market Opportunities
Artificial intelligence in nursing will dramatically increase remote nurse productivity, therefore alleviating some staffing needs for our current roles. However, there’s still a need for clinical oversight and nursing judgment in all fields of remote nursing jobs that AI can’t replicate.
Here are just a few examples of jobs that AI could create in the remote nursing job market:
- Nurse AI auditors
- Nurse AI trainers and educators
- Nurse AI quality assurance and improvement
- Remote patient monitoring
- Nurse data analytics
And don’t worry; bedside nursing isn’t going away soon. We still need nurses to physically round, perform assessments, and complete nursing tasks at the bedside.
What do we hope for the future of Artificial Intelligence in Nursing?
Dr. Feng believes that an excellent application for AI could be AI-driven personal assistants, including working with documents.
For nurses, the future of AI could lead to the following:
- Increased job possibilities. AI will create new jobs that could further intertwine nursing with technology, like remote patient monitoring and increased hybrid job opportunities.
- Less burnout. As facilities continue to expect nurses to do more with less, AI could relieve some of the burdens of copious chart notes and allow nurses to be more goal-oriented and less task-oriented.
- Increased productivity. As businesses primarily focus on productivity, AI could allow production to skyrocket. This could free nurses to perform tasks that utilize clinical judgment or therapeutic communication rather than menial tasks like documenting or clicking boxes.
- More professional respect. As the worlds of nursing and STEM collide, nurses could be the facilitators of tech implementation in healthcare. And that’s a powerful position to be in.
AI Won’t Replace You…
As Dr. Feng says, “AI won’t replace you, but the people who use AI will replace you.” Staying up to date on current trends and learning as much as possible about artificial intelligence in nursing will help you stay informed and be a desirable candidate for new tech-related jobs in the field.
But what does our favorite AI friend have to say about it all?
“Overall, the rise of AI will likely transform remote nursing by improving efficiency, accuracy, and patient outcomes. However, it’s important to note that AI is not a substitute for human interaction and care. Nurses will still be critical in providing compassionate and personalized care to their patients.” – ChatGPT
Check out the Nurse Fern LinkedIn Light-Up course to learn how to do things that AI can’t do, like score your first remote nursing job.