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When Nurses Lead the Search: My Journey into Google’s AI Mode
Lincoln Gombedza
July 27, 2025
🧠Let me tell you a secret.
There’s a quiet revolution happening not on the ward, not in the boardroom, but in the search bar.
I didn’t see it coming. I’d spent years mastering patient assessments, mentorship frameworks, and Microsoft’s Power Platform. But recently, I did something unexpected: I stopped Googling like a human. I started searching like a reformer with AI.
It began with two questions that have haunted many nurse educators:
“Summarise NICE guidance on antipsychotic use in people with learning disabilities – focus on nursing actions.”
“What does the NHS 10-Year Health Plan say about digital upskilling for nurses?”
That’s not a casual search. That’s a call to action. That’s a challenge wrapped in policy and clinical risk, asking, “Are you ready to lead in this digital decade?”
👁️ Enter: Google’s AI Mode
When I typed those questions into the new Google AI Mode—an experimental, Gemini 2.5 pro-powered upgrade hidden within Search Labs—I wasn’t just looking for answers. I was testing the waters of a new kind of intelligence. A nurse’s intelligence amplified by AI reasoning, context, and evidence.
With AI Overviews, I didn’t just get blue links. I got a clinical briefing. Gemini 2.5 pro scanned real-time NICE guidance, cross-checked the NMC Code, and pulled in plain-English action points relevant to nurses delivering care to people with learning disabilities.
No waffle. No Americanised textbook padding. Just relevant, regulated, nursing-focused actions.
What would have taken me 30 minutes bouncing between documents now took under 30 seconds.
🧭 Then It Got Personal
When I asked about the NHS 10-Year Plan and “digital upskilling for nurses,” the AI Mode didn’t just repeat headlines.
It told the story of nursing’s future.
It broke down the three shifts the Plan calls for—prevention, community, digital.
It summarised the exact skills nurses need: data literacy, citizen development, AI safety, and digital inclusion leadership.
It highlighted what’s at stake: if we don’t transform, we’ll be left behind in analogue roles while the system surges ahead.
But here’s what stopped me cold: AI Mode listened. When I asked a follow-up about preceptorship pathways and inclusive upskilling, it remembered my context and adjusted its recommendations.
This wasn’t just search.
It was dialogue. It was professional reflection—coded.
🔎 AI Mode’s Hidden Genius
Google’s new “query fan-out” technique means you’re not just searching once. The model runs dozens of micro-queries across subtopics, checks real-time databases like the Knowledge Graph, and presents a digest that reads like a joint briefing from a policy advisor and a senior lecturer.
@lincolnldnurse 🎯 #nurses , #listen up! What if #florence #Nightingale returned today and said: “The same lamp that once lit #hospital hospital wards must... See more
It doesn’t replace thinking. It stimulates it.
It doesn’t replace evidence-based practice. It sharpens it.
🌱 What This Means for Us
If you're a nurse still typing one-liner questions into Google and clicking the third link down, you're operating in 2010.
In 2025, we don’t search for transformation—we co-create it.
If Florence Nightingale had access to AI Mode, she wouldn’t just run wards—she’d rebuild systems, challenge policy, and launch an open-access library of real-time clinical best practice.
And that’s what we must do now.
Because what Google has built isn’t just for tech bros.
It’s for nurse leaders, EDI champions, student mentors, and citizen developers.
It’s for the clinician who wants to lead but lacks the hours to trawl 15 PDFs.
It’s for the Practice Educator who’s tired of guesswork and wants clarity, quickly.
It’s for us.
🔚 Final Thought
You can’t be a digital nurse in a manual mindset.
Search differently. Think differently.
Ask bigger questions. Use better tools.
Google AI Mode isn’t a toy. It’s a thinking partner. And if you use it well, it’ll teach you how to lead.
Just like it did for me.