Integrating Artificial Intelligence into Nursing Practice

A special issue of Healthcare (ISSN 2227-9032). This special issue belongs to the section "Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 October 2026 | Viewed by 657

Editors


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Guest Editor
School of Nursing and Midwifery, The University of Notre Dame Australia, Fremantle, WA 6160, Australia
Interests: randomised controlled trial; systematic review; cancer supportive care; evidence-based practice; chronic condition; holistic care

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Guest Editor Assistant
School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD 4350, Australia
Interests: pain management; nursing practice; AI in healthcare; recovery and anaesthetic care

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming healthcare by enhancing clinical decision-making, optimizing workflows, and supporting patient-centered care. In nursing practice, AI-driven tools offer opportunities to improve assessment accuracy, early detection of patient deterioration, individualized care planning, and resource allocation. As nurses play a pivotal role in patient safety and care coordination, understanding how AI can be effectively integrated into nursing practice is critical to ensuring that technological advancements align with professional values and clinical needs.

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue, “Integrating Artificial Intelligence into Nursing Practice.” This Special Issue aims to explore the opportunities, challenges, and practical implications of AI adoption in nursing. It seeks to advance scientific knowledge and evidence-based strategies that support safe, ethical, and effective integration of AI technologies into diverse nursing contexts. This topic aligns with the journal’s focus on improving healthcare quality, patient outcomes, and the professional development of nurses through innovation and research.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Implementation and evaluation of AI tools in clinical nursing practice;
  • Nurse–AI collaboration and decision support systems;
  • Ethical and professional considerations in AI-assisted care;
  • Barriers and facilitators to AI adoption in nursing practice;
  • Impact of AI on nursing workflow, patient safety, and quality of care;
  • Perspectives of nurses and patients on AI-driven healthcare.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Jing-Yu (Benjamin) Tan
Guest Editor

Dr. Haiying (Emily) Wang
Guest Editor Assistant

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Keywords

  • artificial intelligence
  • nursing practice
  • clinical decision support
  • machine learning
  • digital health
  • ethical implications
  • patient safety
  • technology adoption
  • evidence-based practice
  • nursing informatics

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

23 pages, 2330 KB  
Article
Schema Enforcement and Structured-Output Stability in Locally Deployed LLMs for Clinical Admission-Note Editing: A Proxy-Based Pre-Deployment Evaluation
by Ya-Lun Yang, Chia-Jung Chen, Tin-Kwang Lin, Shih-Chun Lin and Malcolm Koo
Healthcare 2026, 14(14), 2150; https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare14142150 - 16 Jul 2026
Viewed by 118
Abstract
Background: Reliable structured-output generation is a prerequisite for using large language models (LLMs) in automated clinical documentation workflows, but many evaluations focus on clinical quality before testing whether outputs are parseable, schema-compliant, and stable. Methods: We evaluated three locally deployed open-weight LLMs in [...] Read more.
Background: Reliable structured-output generation is a prerequisite for using large language models (LLMs) in automated clinical documentation workflows, but many evaluations focus on clinical quality before testing whether outputs are parseable, schema-compliant, and stable. Methods: We evaluated three locally deployed open-weight LLMs in the 7- to 8-billion-parameter range (Llama3-Med42-8B, Meta-Llama-3-8B-Instruct, and Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.3) for structured admission-note editing. Seventy de-identified English-language admission notes (35 internal medicine and 35 surgical) were processed by each model in three independent runs under two output-control conditions: a free-text JSON prompt and a schema-enforced structured-output condition. A total of 1260 local inferences were performed in LM Studio on consumer-grade hardware. Automated proxy metrics assessed JSON/schema validity, run-to-run stability, instruction compliance, verbosity, numeric-token preservation, and uncertainty-marker change without clinician adjudication of clinical correctness. Results: Under the free-text JSON prompt, the tested Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.3/embedded-prompt configuration had the weakest structural reliability (74.3–78.6% first-pass validity per run; 18.6–21.4% persistent parse/schema failures after retry), with at least one final failure for 17 of 70 notes. In a message-format sensitivity analysis using Meta-Llama-3-8B-Instruct, embedding system instructions in the user message increased first-attempt invalid outputs compared with separate system/user roles (55/700, 7.9% vs. 12/700, 1.7%). Under schema enforcement, all models produced 70 of 70 first-pass valid, schema-compliant outputs in every run. Documentation behavior nevertheless differed by model, including differences in verbosity and numeric-token preservation. Conclusions: Schema enforcement removed parsing failures in this sample but did not eliminate model-specific editing behavior. Proxy-based screening can identify structurally unstable model-prompt or model-format configurations before clinician review. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Integrating Artificial Intelligence into Nursing Practice)
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