Can digital leadership transform AI anxiety and attitude in nurses?

Background: The lack of artificial intelligence applications in nursing education and the nursing profession in Turkey and the need for strategies for integrating artificial intelligence into the nursing profession continues. At this point, there is a need to transform the negative attitudes and anxiety that may occur in nurses.

Objectives: It was aimed to reorganize the professional transformation in this parallel by analyzing the effect of digital leadership perception, which is explained as how nurses approach digital technologies and innovations and their awareness of how and with which methods they can use these technologies on artificial intelligence anxiety and attitude in the nursing profession.

Design: The study was designed as descriptive, correlational, and cross-sectional.

Participants: The research was conducted by reaching 439 nurses working in hospitals operating in three different regions of Turkey by simple random sampling method.

Methods: In the first part of the data collection tool used in this study, digital leadership scale, artificial intelligence use anxiety, and artificial intelligence attitude scales were used, including questions determining the demographic information of nurses, their relationship with technology, artificial intelligence usage status and its importance in the profession.

Results: It was determined that 29.8% of the nurses had a good relationship with technology, 66.3% knew about using artificial intelligence in health, and 27.3% wanted it to be more involved in their lives. It was determined that nurses' perceptions of digital leadership were at a medium level of 46.9% and a high level of 41.7%, 82.7% had a positive attitude towards artificial intelligence, and 82.7% had low or medium level anxiety when their artificial intelligence anxiety status was examined. There was a significant and negative relationship between digital leadership and AI anxiety (r = -0.434; p < 0.01), a significant and positive relationship between digital leadership and AI attitude (r = 0.468; p < 0.01), and a significant and negative relationship between AI attitude and AI anxiety (r = -0.629; p < 0.01). Finally, it was determined that nurses' perception of digital leadership indirectly affected AI anxiety through AI attitude (β = -0.230, 95% CI [-0.298, -0.165]).

Conclusion: It is suggested that the anxiety and attitude towards artificial intelligence can be transformed positively with the effect of digital leadership, and in this parallel, the digital leadership phenomenon should be evaluated as a practical implementation strategy in integrating artificial intelligence into the nursing profession.

Clinical relevance: Our study showed that artificial intelligence attitude has a mediating role in the indirect effect of the perception of digital leadership in nursing on AI anxiety. It was determined that nurses' digital leadership perception, artificial intelligence anxiety, and artificial intelligence attitude differed significantly with demographic variables.