Nurse Practitioners

Educate patients about self-management of acute or chronic illnesses, tailoring instructions to patients' individual circumstances.

AI: Fully automatable - AI systems are capable of producing tailored patient education for self-management across acute and chronic conditions, personalizing instructions to individual circumstances at scale.

Maintain complete and detailed records of patients' health care plans and prognoses.

AI: Fully automatable - AI can fully automate creation and maintenance of complete, detailed patient records, care plans, and prognostic summaries by extracting data and generating structured notes within EHR workflows.

Recommend interventions to modify behavior associated with health risks.

AI: Fully automatable - AI can design and deliver evidence-based, personalized interventions to modify health-risk behaviors (e.g., coaching, reminders, tailored plans) effectively and at scale.

Provide patients with information needed to promote health, reduce risk factors, or prevent disease or disability.

AI: Fully automatable - AI can generate, personalize, and deliver evidence-based preventive and health-promotion information at scale and with high reliability.

Schedule follow-up visits to monitor patients or evaluate health or illness care.

AI: Fully automatable - Scheduling follow‑ups is a routine administrative task that current AI systems can fully automate, including timing, reminders, and integration with calendars and workflows.

Provide patients or caregivers with assistance in locating health care resources.

AI: Fully automatable - AI can search, triage, and generate tailored, up-to-date local health care resource lists and referrals, enabling full automation of assistance in locating resources.

Analyze and interpret patients' histories, symptoms, physical findings, or diagnostic information to develop appropriate diagnoses.

AI: Partial - AI can analyze histories, symptoms, and diagnostic data to generate differential diagnoses and supporting rationale, but it does not replace clinician judgment and cannot autonomously own the diagnostic decision.

Diagnose or treat acute health care problems, such as illnesses, infections, or injuries.

AI: Partial - AI can provide diagnostic suggestions and treatment options using data and pattern recognition but cannot fully replace clinician evaluation, physical examination, or assume legal responsibility for acute care.

Recommend diagnostic or therapeutic interventions with attention to safety, cost, invasiveness, simplicity, acceptability, adherence, and efficacy.

AI: Partial - AI can generate and prioritize diagnostic and therapeutic options while considering safety, cost, invasiveness, simplicity, acceptability, adherence, and efficacy, but clinician judgment is required to weigh individual patient preferences and complex trade-offs.

Prescribe medications based on efficacy, safety, and cost as legally authorized.

AI: Partial - AI can recommend medications based on evidence about efficacy, safety, and cost, but it cannot legally and safely autonomously prescribe without clinician authorization and comprehensive context.

Prescribe medication dosages, routes, and frequencies, based on such patient characteristics as age and gender.

AI: Partial - AI can calculate standard medication dosages, routes, and frequencies using patient characteristics, but safe prescribing requires comprehensive clinical data, exception handling, and clinician oversight.

Order, perform, or interpret the results of diagnostic tests, such as complete blood counts (CBCs), electrocardiograms (EKGs), and radiographs (x-rays).

AI: Partial - AI can accurately interpret many diagnostic tests—especially imaging and EKGs—and assist with ordering, but it cannot perform specimen collection or fully replace clinician decision-making about testing.

Develop treatment plans, based on scientific rationale, standards of care, and professional practice guidelines.

AI: Partial - AI can draft treatment plans grounded in scientific rationale and guidelines, but complex multimorbidity, social context, and legal responsibility necessitate clinician involvement for final plans.

Detect and respond to adverse drug reactions, with special attention to vulnerable populations such as infants, children, pregnant and lactating women, or older adults.

AI: Partial - AI can detect signals of adverse drug reactions and alert clinicians, but responding to and managing such reactions—especially in vulnerable populations—requires clinical judgment and hands-on care.

Read current literature, talk with colleagues, or participate in professional organizations or conferences to keep abreast of developments in nursing.

AI: Partial - AI can continuously scan, summarize, and flag relevant literature and synthesize professional discussion content, but it cannot genuinely participate in professional organizations or replace human networking and professional judgment.

Counsel patients about drug regimens and possible side effects or interactions with other substances, such as food supplements, over-the-counter (OTC) medications, or herbal remedies.

AI: Partial - AI can accurately check interactions and generate tailored counseling scripts and materials, but delivering empathetic, accountable counseling and handling nuanced patient questions still requires a licensed clinician.

Diagnose or treat chronic health care problems, such as high blood pressure and diabetes.

AI: Partial - AI can support diagnosis and guideline-based treatment planning for chronic conditions and monitor data, but cannot assume full autonomous responsibility for diagnosis and treatment decisions and hands-on care.

Treat or refer patients for primary care conditions, such as headaches, hypertension, urinary tract infections, upper respiratory infections, and dermatological conditions.

AI: Partial - AI can triage, suggest treatment pathways, and recommend referrals for common primary care conditions, but actual treatment, prescribing, and final disposition typically require clinician oversight.

Consult with, or refer patients to, appropriate specialists when conditions exceed the scope of practice or expertise.

AI: Partial - AI can recognize cases that meet referral criteria and automate referral suggestions and coordination, but final decisions and clinician-to-clinician consultation remain human responsibilities.

Diagnose or treat complex, unstable, comorbid, episodic, or emergency conditions in collaboration with other health care providers as necessary.

AI: Partial - AI can provide decision support and coordination in complex or emergency scenarios, but cannot reliably lead diagnosis or treatment for unstable, highly comorbid, or emergent cases without human clinicians.

Supervise or coordinate patient care or support staff activities.

AI: Partial - AI can coordinate tasks, track workflows, and assist with supervisory analytics, but cannot fully replace human leadership, accountability, and complex interpersonal management of staff and patient care.

Maintain current knowledge of state legal regulations for nurse practitioner practice, including reimbursement of services.

AI: Partial - AI can continuously monitor and summarize state regulatory and reimbursement changes but cannot fully replace the nuanced legal interpretation and professional responsibility required for compliance.

Maintain departmental policies and procedures in areas such as safety and infection control.

AI: Partial - AI can draft and update departmental policies by synthesizing guidelines and evidence but cannot fully manage on-the-ground implementation, enforcement, and facility-specific adaptation.

Perform primary care procedures such as suturing, splinting, administering immunizations, taking cultures, and debriding wounds.

AI: Partial - AI can provide step-by-step guidance, augmented reality support, and robotic assistance in limited settings but cannot autonomously perform the full range of hands-on primary care procedures.

Advocate for accessible health care that minimizes environmental health risks.

AI: Partial - AI can identify environmental risks, generate advocacy materials, and model policy impacts but cannot fully execute community engagement, coalition-building, and policy negotiation on its own.

Keep abreast of regulatory processes and payer systems, such as Medicare, Medicaid, managed care, and private sources.

AI: Partial - AI can track, summarize, and automate many routine aspects of payer rules and regulatory updates but complex payer negotiations and final compliance decisions still require human expertise.

Perform routine or annual physical examinations.

AI: Not automatable - Performing a physical examination requires hands‑on maneuvers, palpation, and clinical judgment that AI cannot physically execute or fully replicate as of 2025.