When I set out to design a curriculum for digital health and artificial intelligence (AI) in nursing, there was one overarching question that kept me thinking: How can I prepare students/learners not only to survive, but to thrive in a dynamic, tech-enabled healthcare world where the systems, tools and apps evolve almost weekly?
In traditional healthcare education, content knowledge is the core and often treated as the ultimate destination. This core knowledge is the foundation of medical and health sciences, and thus the concepts are longwithstanding and never changes. But in a world where digital health applications and AI models are undergoing dynamic changes everyday, the content that is taught today can become obsolete tomorrow. I can no longer depend on static training for learners. Nursing students are still embedded in the core values of the famous Florence Nightingale, but how can these core values shine in the digital age, and beyond our phone screens? Well, we must look beyond teaching the content alone and focus on cultivating digital identity, digital ethics, enduring digital judgment and human-centered clinican-AI collaborative care.
Beyond IQ and EQ: Acquiring the 3rd Sense of Intelligence
Traditional nursing education still focuses on intellectual capability (IQ) and emotional empathy (EQ). While these are still important, modern tech-enhanced practice require younger generations of nurses to have a third crucial competency: the Digital Intelligence Quotient (DQ).
This third intelligence may still be foreign in Singapore, but the DQ framework has already been recognized and trained globally across 8 core domains, ranging from digital identity and digital safety, to digital communication and digital rights. The level of competencies are split across four levels that trains one from being just a basic technology user to becoming an organizational innovator. In NUR1131 Digital Health and AI in Healthcare Practice, we shall use the DQ framework to help students map their digital growth and construct a personalized Digital Health Process Portfolio (DHPP) throughout the semester.
With Great Power Comes Greater Responsibility: The Need to Develop Our Healthcare ‘Spider-Sense’
Just like the evolution of Spiderman’s web-shooters, which transitioned from manual web cartridges in the comic books to sophisticated, integrated suits in the Marvel Avengers, to the physiological mutation that produced organic webbing; one would notice that AI in healthcare is also moving from an isolated tool that we consciously pick up to an organic infrastructure that runs continuously in the background.
As AI tools become more capable of specialist-level tasks, we can be sure that “anyone can wear the mask”. But anyone who resists wearing this AI mask will fall behind, and be replaced by someone else who not only wears it, but embraces its power. However, raw technology lacks clinical intuition. To safeguard patients, caregivers, and our healthcare professions, future nurses need to move from ‘HumanIzation’ to ‘HumanAIzation’ – instead of fearing AI, we should learn to embrace AI responsibly, by leveraging the good, managing the bad, and making sense of everything in-between. This means that future nurses must develop a clinical ‘Spider-Sense‘ that spans across three pivotal roles:
- Sense-Makers: Interpreting complex AI outputs within the nuances of real-world clinical practice and patient care.
- Safeguards: Challenging, documenting, and overriding unsafe automated outputs using practical evaluation tools.
- System-Shapers: Identifying clinical problems, leading workflow design, and proving the real-world value of health innovations.
A Course Designed For A Changing Future
Designed as an engaging 4-MC elective, NUR1131 is designed as a thought-provoking 4-MC elective that scaffolds your learning into four progressive phases, each anchored by a core essential question:
| Your DQ Growth Journey | Your Core Essential Questions |
|---|---|
| Phase A | Can I Trust It? Making sense of health data, digital health tech and AI |
| Phase B | Can I Judge It? Critical evaluation of digital health applications, LLMs and health information online |
| Phase C | What’s My Responsibility? Navigating AI ethics, healthcare cybersecurity and e-professionalism |
| Phase D | Can I Shape It? Transforming from a digital user to a healthcare innovator |
NUR1131 Promotional Showcase
If you want to know more about this course, explore the multimedia assets below:
Course Trailer
Watch this short teaser on why DQ and a clinical ‘spider-sense’ is needed in this digital era:
EDM Infographic
View the visual summary of what this course is all about:
Learn Why Future Nurses Need DQ and How NUR1131 Helps You Attain It
Watch a breakdwn on why DQ matters to the future of nursing practice and how this course helps you attain this essential third intelligence:
Course Overview Presentation Deck
Slide through the course orientation deck for a closer look at the module highlights: