AI use, training and AI policy among healthcare professionals

In September 2025 Nivel, the Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research, sent an online questionnaire to its national Nursing and Care Panel, supplemented by an open link shared via the nurses’ association V&VN, LinkedIn and its own website. Responses came from 890 nurses, carers, nurse practitioners, support workers and practice nurses working in hospitals, mental health care, disability care, community nursing, GP practices and elderly care; the results were weighted by sector and level of education and published in April 2026. Just over half (54 per cent) used AI at work, ranging from 85 per cent of nurse practitioners to 38 per cent of carers with a vocational qualification. Most often it is used to look up information; 16 per cent use AI for record-keeping in the electronic client file. Seven in ten users have been doing so for less than a year, and for two thirds the initiative was their own.

These professionals see less of what their own organisation is doing. A fifth feel that their organisation actively encourages the use of AI. Half miss a clear organisation-wide AI policy, most often in GP practices, and say they are not involved in decisions about the use of AI. Three in ten know of ethical guidelines for AI in their organisation. Almost nine in ten have never had any training in AI and two thirds feel insufficiently prepared. At the same time, two thirds believe that they themselves are responsible if AI makes a mistake.

In March 2026 M&I/Partners published the eighth AI Monitor Ziekenhuizen, its monitor of AI in Dutch hospitals, with responses from 52 hospitals (73 per cent of the total). The 56 respondents are mainly CIOs, programme managers and clinical informaticians. In those hospitals policy grew sharply in a year: 76 per cent have an approved AI policy, against 50 per cent in 2025 and 30 per cent in 2024, and 60 per cent have an AI board or steering group. Generative AI is used in 90 per cent of hospitals. For the AI tools staff bring in themselves, 54 per cent have ground rules, 29 per cent offer their own secure AI environment and 21 per cent provide training. Almost all hospitals are working on AI literacy, mainly through communication, guidelines and e-learning; 21 per cent have an organisation-wide training plan. Staff awareness and knowledge of AI is named by 42 per cent as an area that is not in order.

On 6 October 2025 the Dutch Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport announced the Programme for Realising AI in Healthcare, with the ministry in a coordinating role and, as agreed in the AZWA (the supplementary health and social care agreement), an initial focus on reducing paperwork. The letter places final responsibility with the healthcare professional who uses the application. The two surveys look at different groups: hospital staff in the monitor, frontline professionals in six sectors at Nivel. The two groups cannot therefore be compared like for like. Set side by side, though, the framework in hospitals is growing faster than the training of the people who, according to the minister, carry the responsibility.

How solid is this? The Nivel survey is the first of this size among nurses and carers and captures a single moment, the end of 2025. The hospital monitor does have a series, but the answers come from management and IT. Only a further measurement will show whether the gap between policy and the front line is narrowing.