Beyond AI and patient-facing technology, nurses require skills to effectively integrate digital tools into clinical workflows, data management, and quality improvement initiatives. This session addresses workforce readiness, upskilling, and the ethical, practical, and safety implications of digital transformation in nursing practice.

As AI transforms healthcare, the challenge for nurses is not just adopting technology but ensuring it enhances, rather than erodes, the human connection essential to quality care. Join to examine how to get the balance right, encouraging the critical engagement with AI tools while safeguarding empathy, trust, and patient care with a personal touch. Explore strategies to shape the future of healthcare, ensuring technology empowers nurses and protects the patient experience, including:

- Integrating AI into everyday use in ways that enable rather than replace direct patient care

- Maintaining empathy, trust, and human connection in a digitally-driven environment

- Influencing AI adoption, advocating for patient-centred, ethical care as healthcare evolves 

As healthcare systems grow more complex, nursing leadership remains the backbone of safe, reliable, and high-quality care. This panel brings together senior nursing leaders to explore how nurses can steer organisation-wide improvements—through smarter rostering, standardised practice, digital enablement, clinical governance, and a culture of continuous learning. Speakers will discuss practical strategies for reducing variation, strengthening multidisciplinary collaboration, and empowering nurses to shape system-level safety outcomes across acute, community, and aged care settings.

- Reducing variation: standardising practice to strengthen safety

- Workforce empowerment: enabling nurses to lead improvement

- System connectivity: improving safety across care transitions

- Data for quality: using insights to drive better outcomes