The data: Nurses’ use of AI increased almost threefold over the past year, with 44% now using it compared with 15% in 2025, according to Incredible Health’s 2026 Annual State of Nursing survey of 2,240 US nurses. Nearly two-thirds (65%) use general chatbots like ChatGPT and Copilot, while 34% use healthcare-specific AI tools like Epic AI.

Among the most common ways nurses use AI:

• 37% for documentation and charting
• 37% for patient education and materials
• 32% for drug or clinical reference lookups
• 27% for drafting communications to patients, families, or colleagues
• 13% for clinical decision support

Why it matters: Nurses are adopting AI quickly, but their lack of confidence in the technology hampers efficiency gains. Nearly half of nurses (46%) say they've received no training on how to best use AI in the workplace. Among nurses who use AI, 83% say AI-generated responses are rarely or only sometimes accurate enough to use without double-checking, and half say their last use of AI saved little or no time.

AI training and confidence gaps extend beyond nursing. Nearly eight in 10 (77%) healthcare professionals, including physicians and nurses, say AI training is unavailable, limited, or inconsistent at their organization, per a June Philips’ Future Health Index 2026 survey. At the same time, 65% report correcting AI-generated misinformation.

Implications for health systems and providers: AI has the potential to reduce nurses’ administrative burden and burnout, but most healthcare organizations aren't helping them realize those benefits. As adoption grows, hospitals should focus not just on AI access, but also on enabling nurses to use it to improve both administrative work and patient care by investing in training. They must also set clear expectations for AI in clinical workflows and establish governance for enterprise and healthcare-specific AI tools over consumer chatbots to maximize AI's value while promoting safer, more consistent clinical use.

This content is part of EMARKETER’s subscription Briefings, where we pair daily updates with data and analysis from forecasts and research reports. Our Briefings prepare you to start your day informed, to provide critical insights in an important meeting, and to understand the context of what’s happening in your industry. Not a subscriber? Click here to get a demo of our full platform and coverage.