Cited by 32Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and EducationArtificial Intelligence in EducationInnovations in Medical Education

The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of generative artificial intelligence: a qualitative study of undergraduate nursing students

Open access
Yuan, You, Fu, Jing, Leng, Lanlan, Wen, Zhuosi, Wei, Xiaoman, Han, Die, Hu, Xinyang, Liang, Yu +3 more·2025·Frontiers in Public Health

Abstract

Background: While Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) is increasingly applied in nursing education, research on undergraduates’ perceptions, experiences, and impacts remains limited. Objective: This study aims to explore undergraduate nursing students’ perceptions of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) associated with Gen AI through qualitative research methods. Methods: Using the SWOT analysis framework as the theoretical basis, data were collected through semi-structured interviews with nursing undergraduates via convenience sampling from May to July 2025 until saturation, and analyzed using Colaizzi’s phenomenological method for thematic extraction. Results: A total of 36 nursing undergraduates were interviewed, from whom four main themes and 16 sub-themes were identified. These were categorized into internal and external factors. Internal positive factors (Strengths) included personalized learning assistance, skill training and curriculum support, efficiency and cognitive expansion, and data processing and learning capability. Internal negative factors (Weaknesses) involved ethical and legal risks, the generation of low-quality or inaccurate outputs, technical barriers, and cognitive and learning risks. External opportunities comprised policy and resource support, technological advancement and evolution, interdisciplinary integration and collaboration, and emerging career opportunities. External threats included technological adaptation and cost risks, digital divide and equity gap, job displacement risk, and educational integrity risk. Conclusion: Undergraduate nursing students regard generative AI as a double-edged sword—its strengths in boosting learning efficiency, broadening knowledge access and simulating clinical decisions are offset by ethical, technological and equity challenges. Nursing education must therefore strengthen technical guidance, ethics training and resource optimization to maximize its strengths and opportunities while minimizing its weaknesses and threats.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1672140

Cites

53 of 53 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • When grounded on AI-produced reflective text without oversight by teachers, reflective practice tends to culminate in stapled and shallow reflections.

    “However, when grounded on AI-produced reflective text without any oversight by teachers, this kind of practice tends to culminate in stapled and shallow reflections [19].”

    From HOW AI TOOLS (LIKE CHATGPT/GEMINI) AFFECT CRITICAL THINKING IN NURSING STUDENTS. A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW (2026) · cites this paper as [19]

    Results, Theme 2 (page unavailable) reports students’ concerns that relying on AI can foster shortcut thinking, and the Discussion, ST strategy (page unavailable) says a lack of human review can compromise AI-generated content quality. The paper does not report that teacher-unsupervised AI-produced reflective text tends to yield stapled or shallow reflections specifically. (LLM, conf=0.82)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Yuan, Y., Fu, J., Leng, L., Wen, Z., Wei, X., Han, D., Hu, X., Liang, Y., Luo, Q., Zhang, X., & Hu, R.
Affiliations
  • Zunyi Medical University (CN)
  • Zunyi Medical and Pharmaceutical College (CN)
Corresponding author
Hu, Rujun
Venue
Frontiers in Public Health
Published
2025-09-04
Volume
13
Pages
1672140-1672140
ISSN
2296-2565 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W4413998539
Cited by
25
References
53
Citations by year
2026: 23 · 2025: 2
FWCI
6.02
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Frontiers in Public Health (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Funders
  • Recruitment Program of Global Experts
  • Division of Undergraduate Education
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Health Informatics › Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Artificial Intelligence in Education
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Innovations in Medical Education
Keywords
generative AI, nursing education, undergraduate nursing students, student perceptions, SWOT analysis, ethical risks of AI, digital divide, job displacement, personalized learning, artificial intelligence in education
MeSH terms
Generative Artificial Intelligence, Adult, Artificial Intelligence, Curriculum, Education, Nursing, Baccalaureate, Female, Humans, Interviews as Topic, Male, Students, Nursing, Qualitative Research, Young Adult

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review