Executive overview
For UK nurses in 2025, the right digital tools are essential for delivering fast, safe, and effective care. As roles expand and documentation burdens grow, artificial intelligence is emerging as a powerful ally to support clinical practice at the bedside, in the community, and in clinics. When chosen carefully, AI-powered tools can enhance medicines safety, reduce administrative tasks, and provide rapid access to evidence-based guidance.
This article provides a pragmatic map for UK nurses, advanced nurse practitioners, and their teams on the best point-of-care knowledge resources, AI-driven Q&A platforms, and ambient scribing technologies. We will focus on UK-trusted sources and the essential safety guardrails set out by NHS England to ensure these tools are used responsibly and effectively.
What nurses need from AI at the point of care
To be genuinely useful in a busy nursing workflow, any digital or AI tool must deliver on four key principles:
- Rapid, reliable answers: It must provide fast access to information on guidelines, red flags, and clinical procedures.
- Medicines safety: It must support safe prescribing and administration with clear information on dosing, contraindications, and practical "how-to" advice.
- Documentation efficiency: It should reduce the time spent on administrative tasks, such as note-taking, without compromising quality.
- Clear provenance: All information must be traceable, with clear citations to authoritative sources and visible version dates (BMJ Best Practice, BNF).
Core UK knowledge sources nurses should anchor to
These are the foundational resources for evidence-based nursing practice in the UK.
- NICE Clinical Knowledge Summaries (CKS): This is the ideal first-line clinical synopsis for everyday presentations. CKS provides quick, practical, and evidence-based summaries on over 370 topics commonly encountered in primary care and first-contact settings.
- BNF / BNFC: The British National Formulary and the BNF for Children are the definitive UK references for all medicines information. This includes the essential Nurse Prescribers’ Formulary (NPF), which is critical for those with prescribing rights.
- BMJ Best Practice: Freely accessible to all NHS staff via an OpenAthens account, this platform provides in-depth, peer-reviewed guidance on diagnosis and management. Its excellent mobile app supports offline use, making it invaluable on the ward or in the community.
Evidence search & AI Q&A (fast, cited answers)
When you need a specific answer quickly, these AI-enhanced tools are designed for speed and reliability.
- Trip Database & AskTrip: The Trip Database is a powerful clinical search engine, widely recommended by UK health libraries, that filters for high-quality evidence like guidelines and systematic reviews. Its AI-powered AskTrip feature takes this a step further, providing referenced summaries in response to natural language questions.
- iatroX: As another AI, citation-first Q&A option, iatroX provides answers grounded in UK guidelines. It is designed to support rapid "what does the guidance say?" checks during triage, ward rounds, or virtual clinics. The key is to always copy the provided citations into your clinical notes to ensure a clear audit trail.
Medicines & practical “how-to” (nursing essentials)
For any task related to medicines, accuracy and adherence to UK standards are non-negotiable.
- BNF / BNFC: Use the full monographs and treatment summaries to verify prescribing and administration details, including doses, contraindications, and interactions.
- Nurse Prescribers’ Formulary (NPF): This is the essential formulary for community practitioner nurse prescribers, such as those in district nursing and health visiting, and is included within the main BNF.
Ambient scribing & voice tools (documentation time-savers)
"Ambient scribes" or Ambient Voice Technology (AVT) are AI tools that listen to a clinical consultation and automatically convert the conversation into structured notes or letters.
The NHS position as of mid-2025 is clear: services should only adopt compliant solutions. Any tool that summarises a consultation must, at a minimum, be registered with the MHRA as a Class I medical device and have a robust clinical safety case and Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA). Organisations remain liable for the use of non-compliant products (NHS England, ig.n3i.co.uk).
For community, practice-nursing, and ward teams, these tools offer the potential to reclaim precious minutes from every patient encounter. However, it is a mandatory safety principle that every AI-generated output must be clinically verified by the user before being saved to the patient record.
Micro-workflows (copy-ready boxes)
- Acute presentation (e.g., UTI in the community):
- Check CKS for initial assessment and management steps.
- Use the BNF to confirm antibiotic choice, dosing, and contraindications.
- If needed, use AskTrip for a referenced check of any guideline nuances.
- Document the final plan and provide patient advice.
- Medication check (care home round):
- Review the full BNF monograph for the medication in question.
- Check the relevant treatment summary for class-specific advice.
- Record counselling points in the notes (an ambient scribe may help draft these; always verify against the BNF).
- Clinic letters/admin:
- Use an NHS-compliant ambient scribe to draft the letter or summary.
- The responsible nurse or ACP must clinically verify the entire output for accuracy and completeness.
- File to the record as per your local Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).
Selection criteria for nursing teams
- Provenance: The tool must show its work. Look for clear citations and "last updated" dates.
- Access & offline: Confirm OpenAthens access for BMJ Best Practice and enable the offline content packs on the mobile app.
- NHS compliance (for scribes): Before piloting, check the tool’s MHRA class, clinical safety case, and DPIA against the latest NHS AI scribe guidance.
30-60-90 day adoption plan (nursing-led)
- Days 1–30: Baseline your current "time-to-answer" for common queries and your average documentation time. Ensure all team members have working OpenAthens logins. Train the team on using Trip/AskTrip and the BNF app effectively.
- Days 31–60: Pilot an NHS-compliant ambient scribe in a single clinic or on one community round. Mandate the human verification step. Collect user satisfaction and time-saving metrics.
- Days 61–90: If the pilot is successful, scale what works. Embed the practice of capturing citations in your documentation templates. Formalise your SOPs for scribe verification and data protection.
KPIs for nursing teams
- Knowledge access: Time taken to locate a specific piece of guidance; percentage of clinical notes that include cited sources.
- Medicines safety: Number of interventions made (e.g., dose corrections, interaction flags) that were grounded in a BNF check.
- Documentation: Time spent per note or letter before and after implementing an ambient scribe; percentage of notes verified without needing significant rework.
Risks & mitigations
- Over-trust of AI text: Mitigate by creating a culture where requiring citations is standard practice. Always verify AI-generated summaries against a primary source like NICE or the BNF before acting.
- Non-compliant scribe use: Mitigate by following the NHS England procurement and deployment guidance strictly. Do not deploy any tool that cannot provide its MHRA registration and clinical safety documentation.
- Connectivity gaps: Mitigate by prioritising tools with robust offline access, such as the BMJ Best Practice mobile app.
FAQ
- Is BMJ Best Practice free for NHS nurses?
- Yes, access is centrally funded for NHS staff in England. You can log in via your OpenAthens account, which also allows you to create a personal account to enable the mobile app and its offline features.
- What’s the official UK medicines reference for nurses?
- The BNF and BNFC are the definitive sources. This includes the Nurse Prescribers’ Formulary (NPF) for community practitioners with prescribing rights.
- Can nurses use AI scribes?
- Yes, but only with NHS-compliant products that have the required safety and regulatory evidence. All AI-generated outputs must be clinically verified by the responsible nurse or practitioner before being saved.
- Which AI Q&A tools show their sources?
- AskTrip is designed to surface referenced summaries from the literature. Always click through to the underlying guidance to verify the context.