Why Florida State Created an AI-Focused Nursing Degree

The Florida State University College of Nursing has launched what it calls the nation’s first AI-focused Master of Science in Nursing program and is creating an AI Innovation Consortium. Jing Wang, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.N., dean of the nursing school, recently spoke with Healthcare Innovation about why it is so important to begin infusing AI tools and concepts into nursing and medical education.

In addition to her role at FSU, Wang is an adjunct professor in Biomedical Informatics and Public Health at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Her interdisciplinary research uses mobile and connected health technologies to optimize multiple-behavior lifestyle interventions and improve patient-centered outcomes among the chronically ill and aging populations with multiple chronic conditions, especially among the rural and underserved populations.

She also has served as a senior scientific advisor to Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and works with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology as a senior policy advisor.

Healthcare Innovation: We write a lot about how health systems are deploying AI solutions in clinical care, but we haven’t written much about how medical schools and nursing schools are approaching it, so I was intrigued to hear that you’re integrating AI into nursing education and practice at FSU. Could you talk about some of the ways that you’re thinking of approaching it in nursing education?

Wang: It’s so critical we’re educating the next generation of healthcare workers in adopting these AI solutions. Nurses are the largest group of healthcare professionals and have been the most trusted professionals for over 25 years. Nurses are at the bedside, are at the front line of care, and are implementing all the digital and AI solutions. If you ask health system leaders implementing AI solutions who the underground implementer are, they will almost always say that over 50% are nurses. 

Yet we have not really been up to speed in the academic field with this AI transformation. But we can’t just teach the same content every day in nursing school and expect that the graduates will just figure out how to leverage AI in their clinical practice. 

I have been leveraging my own background in digital health and AI to see what can we do with the students. Before COVID, I started bringing nurses and medical doctor students together to learn about smart and connected health technology. When COVID hit, all the students needed to have the skills to deliver telemedicine. Fast forward to right now and it’s AI that we felt like we cannot ignore. That’s why we took the bold step of launching the nation’s first master of science in Nursing with a concentration focused on AI applications in healthcare.

HCI: Do the people going through the program have to understand the concepts of machine learning and understanding things about algorithmic bias, or is it more about getting comfortable working with health IT tools that have AI modules built into them, or both?

Wang: It’s kind of a hybrid of both of the things you mentioned, because in order for nurses to feel comfortable with what they’re implementing, they need to understand some of the foundational principles of AI like machine learning, deep learning, predictive analytics, as well as where some of the potential bias and hallucinations could come in. We’re not trying to train these nurses to be engineers or coders, but it’s more about that collaboration. When I use the term interprofessional education, it is about teaching the students how to speak each other’s languages in a way that they can understand the other party and the other party can hear them.

HCI: Do you have a set number of students who will go through the program at a time?

Wang: We have about 1,000 students across the different undergraduate and master programs. For this particular master program, we’re starting small with about 15 students, and we’re aiming to grow into about 70 per year. The program started in January.

HCI: I also understand you’re setting up an AI Innovation Consortium at FSU. Who will be involved in that and what will it focus on?

Wang: The consortium is actually more of a national effort that will be based at Florida State University College of Nursing. The idea is to provide this collaborative platform to advance research and education policy together. We’re finalizing the initial slate of members who are interested in joining us as a consortium. It will include leading healthcare systems who really would like to put their nurses at the forefront, but also peer nursing schools who also have a huge interest in leading the innovation for AI in nursing education.

HCI: What about the companies that traditionally publish curriculum for nursing programs? Are they involved in in creating curriculum about AI for nurses or are you having to create the content yourselves? 

Wang: We are creating all of the content ourselves, but some of our course lecturers are chief nursing officers of AI company, and also chief nursing officers from healthcare systems with a deep informatics background. Every year the content is evolving, so we actually involve a lot of entrepreneurs in the AI industry to be guest lecturers, so we can learn the most recent science in AI and what’s out there in industry. One of our co-directors who we have hired is an entrepreneur in residence, Rebecca Love, who is a nursing innovator and entrepreneur and really brings her extensive expertise in nursing entrepreneurship and AI. We also have a co-director who has deep digital health research experience, and we have other nurses with informatics backgrounds.

HCI: This must open up quite a few avenues for research into how this is impacting nursing workflow in hospitals, but also in other settings, such as home care….

Wang: Yes, exactly. That’s why we we really see research as the core focus of the consortium, because we recognize that we cannot just look at the same problem and give you an AI tool. We really need to understand the workflows in healthcare settings. Some nurses are really anti-AI nowadays because there’s this incorrect perception that it’s going to be another thing that will take me away from my patients. However, it should actually reduce the time nurses will spend in front of a computer. And nurses end up being the people who need to juggle everything when there are live patients in front of us. So I think research is core as we look at the implementation of these novel AI solutions. They have huge potential, but if they are not done right, they will actually create more burden for our current healthcare workforce that’s already overburdened with electronic solutions.