ChatGPT in Nursing Education: Enhancing Learning or Undermining Critical Thinking

In the developing era of technology, Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT) plays an important role in education. Integrating ChatGPT into nursing education has both advantages and drawbacks. Its strengths include acting as a personalized mentor, providing real-time feedback, introducing new vocabulary, initiating an active learning environment through virtual simulations, and supporting evaluation of learning frameworks, preferences, and outcomes. These features can enhance student engagement, self-directed learning, and overall educational effectiveness. Reduced creativity and critical thinking, misinformation, potential hallucinations or stochastic parroting, and over-reliance on AI-generated outputs are the identified drawbacks. Ethical and pedagogical challenges, such as data privacy, security, and discrimination, also arise with Artificial Intelligence (AI) integration into the nursing curriculum. This letter aims to address the potential benefits, challenges, and ethical concerns of integrating ChatGPT into nursing education and its impact on teaching and learning. Leveraging ChatGPT responsibly can enrich traditional nursing education, but humanistic qualities such as empathy, compassion, and emotional intelligence must remain central. It is recommended that the incorporation of ChatGPT into nursing education be guided by clear institutional policies, ensuring compliance with ethical and legal standards while supporting effective, safe, and human-centered learning.