The future of healthcare won't be shaped by technology alone. Nurses will play a vital role in ensuring artificial intelligence (AI) enhances care, supports clinicians, and improves patient outcomes. At the 2026 AMSN Convention, attendees will have the opportunity to explore the evolving landscape with Amy McCarthy, DNP, RNC-MNN, NE-BC, CENP, during her general session, “Co-Designing the Future: Clinicians and AI Agents in Healthcare Transformation.” In this session preview, McCarthy highlights the importance of co-designing AI with clinicians, empowering nurses to take an active role in innovation, and ensuring technology serves as a tool to enhance, rather than replace, nursing expertise.

Give our readers a preview of your general session, “Co-Designing the Future: Clinicians and AI Agents in Healthcare Transformation”.

In my session, I’ll discuss what co-design really looks like in a clinical setting and why it’s so important to take the time not only to listen to clinicians but also to understand the specific problems they are trying to solve.

Too often, we see products developed based on assumptions about clinical workflows. But healthcare is constantly changing, and the challenges clinicians face today may be very different from those they faced even a few years ago. We need to understand those challenges and think intentionally about how technology can be used to create better experiences for both nurses and patients.

I’ll also share some of my own career journey and talk about what the role of a chief nursing officer (CNO) in healthcare technology looks like today. I want nurses to see that there is an important place for them in industry and technology. Nurses are inherently innovative. We assess complex situations, identify problems, adapt in real time, and continuously improve processes — many of the same principles that drive engineering and product development. Nurses should absolutely have a role in the design, creation, implementation, and evaluation of AI.

How should nurses expect to interact with AI, and in what ways are nurses already using the technology?

When I think about the smart hospital room of the future, I envision nurses becoming supervisors and orchestrators of technology, allowing them to spend more time being truly present with patients — something that can be incredibly difficult today.

I also think team nursing will continue to evolve. The care team may include the bedside nurse, virtual nurses, other clinicians, and AI agents working together to support the patient. We are in an important phase right now where we are figuring out how those different team members and technologies can work together effectively and safely.

Nurses are already interacting with AI today — sometimes without necessarily thinking of it as AI. We’re seeing technology integrated into EHRs, ambient documentation tools that reduce the burden of charting, and systems that help surface changes or potential concerns in a patient’s condition. Used well, these technologies can help nurses make faster, more proactive decisions while reducing some of the administrative work that takes them away from the bedside.

How has AI changed the way nurses practice? What are the pros and cons?

AI is beginning to change nursing practice by giving nurses tools that can improve efficiency, reduce documentation burden, and help identify changes in a patient’s condition earlier. That creates an opportunity for nurses to be more proactive rather than reactive.

The risk, as with any technology, is overreliance. If we become too dependent on technology to tell us what is happening with a patient, we risk diminishing the critical thinking and clinical judgment that are fundamental to nursing practice.

There has to be a balance. AI can be an incredibly valuable tool, but it should augment — not replace — a nurse’s expertise. At the center of every alert, prediction, and data point is a patient. We still need nurses to look at that patient, assess what is happening, ask questions, and use their clinical judgment.

In your experience, how do nurses feel about using AI?

As the CNO of a healthcare technology company, my day-to-day involves using AI, and I’m excited about what I’m seeing. I believe this technology has the potential to fundamentally change how we care for patients while also giving nurses something incredibly valuable back: Time.

Over the years, nurses have taken on an enormous number of tasks, documentation requirements, and administrative responsibilities. Those demands can take us away from the parts of nursing that drew many of us to the profession in the first place: Being present with patients, building relationships, listening, educating, and caring for people.

I encourage nurses to lean into the conversation around AI. Skepticism is healthy. We should absolutely ask hard questions about safety, evidence, bias, workflow, and patient outcomes. But we also need nurses actively participating in determining how this technology should be used. Rather than having AI simply happen to nursing, nurses should help shape how AI happens in nursing.

What are some potential future uses of AI in the healthcare field?

I think we’ll see AI agents increasingly supporting nurses with documentation, administrative tasks, care coordination, and other parts of the workflow that consume significant amounts of time today.

I also believe we’ll see nurses take on a new role as supervisors of AI-enabled workflows — overseeing AI agents and other technologies that work alongside the clinical team. Beyond software, I expect we’ll see continued advances at the intersection of AI and robotics, with technologies that can assist nurses with both cognitive and physical aspects of care.

The goal shouldn’t be to remove nurses from care. It should be to remove unnecessary work from nurses so they can spend more of their expertise and energy on the things that require a nurse.

Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know about your session or AI and healthcare in general?

The most important thing for nurses to recognize is that AI is constantly evolving, and it is already part of healthcare. It will affect our patients, our workflows, and our profession. There really is no way around that.

Instead of asking, “How do we keep AI away from nursing?” I encourage nurses to ask, “AI is here — how do we make sure it is safe? How do we make sure it improves patient care? And how do we make sure it creates a better experience for clinicians as well?”

Nurses need to stay informed, ask questions, participate in implementation, and advocate for patients. We have an opportunity to help shape how AI is incorporated into healthcare rather than simply adapting to decisions made without us.

Ultimately, AI should complement the human elements of healthcare, not compete with them. If we design and implement it thoughtfully, it can help create an environment where technology works in the background and nurses have more capacity to care and be present with patients.

Register today for the 2026 AMSN Convention and be part of the conversations defining the future of nursing.