Nurses must be prepared to navigate complex and unpredictable conditions in acute clinical settings, making it important for nurse educators to ensure students are exposed to high-risk scenarios before experiencing them in real practice.
Artificial intelligence offers the solution to this demand, according to Jennifer Brower, DNP, APRN, clinical assistant professor at Indiana University School of Nursing and coordinator of the Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner Program.
Brower will present her work at the 2026 Coalition of Advanced Practice Registered Nurses of Indiana (CAPNI) Annual APRN Conference, on February 18-20 at the French Lick Springs Hotel. Her presentation, “Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in Simulation-Based Education,” will explore how AI can be used to develop dynamic clinical scenarios and evaluation tools within healthcare simulation-based education.
CAPNI promotes the practice of APRNs that includes nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives, and clinical nurse specialists in the state of Indiana. The organization’s more than 1,600 members include practicing and retired APRNs, as well as students.
At the conference, Brower will address how AI-enhanced simulation differs from traditional simulation methods.
“Integrating AI into simulation design fundamentally reshapes the clinician's learning experience by making scenarios more adaptive, efficient, personalized, and reflective of real-world complexity, compared to traditional manually authored simulations,” she explained. “It also provides the opportunity for updates to existing scenarios with up-to-the-minute evidence, guidelines, or institutional protocols. This creates a more authentic sense of clinical reasoning under uncertainty in a more learner-centric environment.”
At the IU School of Nursing, students begin training in Simulation Skills Centers during their first semester where computerized manikins are at the core of simulation education. The manikins range in sizes from newborn to adult and can be assigned medical histories and programmed with vital signs, pulses, pupil responses, realistic voices, and even bodily fluids.
The future of AI-assisted simulation in both academic and clinical settings is especially promising, Brower said.
“What excites me most is the way AI is transforming simulation into an experience that mirrors the fluidity and uncertainty of real clinical practice,” she added. “AI allows us to build learning environments where scenarios shift in real time, responding to learners’ decisions and adjusting difficulty based on their needs. It also opens the door to safely and consistently immersing learners in rare but high-stakes events, such as maternal morbidity, sudden clinical deterioration, challenging communication moments, and interprofessional tension, at a depth and scale that simply hasn’t been possible before.”
Ultimately, Brower hopes her presentation encourages educators to view AI as a supportive tool rather than an intimidating replacement for traditional teaching methods.
“We don’t have to be AI experts to use these tools effectively,” she urged. “We just have to be willing to rethink what’s possible.”
