Your Nurse Rulebook Just Changed: ANA Adds AI to Scope and Standards

On September 22, the American Nurses Association published the fifth edition of Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice, its first update since 2021. The new edition formally embeds innovation into professional nursing practice and gives nurses guidance on evaluating artificial intelligence and emerging technologies through an ethical lens. As health systems roll out AI documentation tools, predictive alerts, and virtual nursing models, the fifth edition signals that evaluating these technologies is part of a nurse’s professional responsibility — supporting nurses who question a tool that seems unsafe or push back on an algorithm that conflicts with their clinical judgment.