APA Citation Help, 7th Edition for Medicine, Nursing, & Health Sciences

Updated October, 2025

APA 7 foremost defers to instructor guidelines on the use or non-use of AI tools in the academic setting. 

However, if your instructor has cleared you to use ChatGPT or other AI & large language tools, use the templates below to cite them.

APA suggests describing how the tool was used in the methods section or the introduction of your paper. 

More detailed information can be found on the following posts from the APA (all information on this page is taken from these posts):

• Citing generative AI in APA Style: Reference formats
• AI as a search engine and AI integrated into common software
• Is AI “allowed” in APA Style?

Reference List

In-Text

• Most AI chat tools, including ChatGPT, now include a sharing option that typically provides users with a unique URL and a title for each chat. Use that as the retrieval URL. 
  • Note that if you share a chat’s URL, users can continue that chat with the AI. However, in the tools tested by APA, the continued conversation does not seem to be saved for anyone except the person who continued the chat; other readers who visit the chat link would access just the original conversation.
• An example of AI use in text is below:
  • When prompted with “Is the left brain right brain divide real or a metaphor?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that although the two brain hemispheres are somewhat specialized, “the notation that people can be characterized as ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’ is considered to be an oversimplification and a popular myth” (OpenAI, 2023).  

Reference List

In-Text

• Cite an AI tool generally when it would be unhelpful, unethical, or otherwise inappropriate to cite a specific chat—as well as when you want to point to the existence of the AI tool but not necessarily cite specific information from it.

• A scenario in which it would be appropriate to cite the AI tool generally would be if you used AI to edit, analyze, organize, or refine your own writing—you do not need to put all the drafts and iterations of your work on display by citing the specific chat unless doing so is desirable or helpful for some reason. Disclose in the Method section or author note that you have used AI in the preparation of your paper and citing the tool. That in-text citation in the paper’s body plus a general reference to the tool, rather than a reference for each chat, is enough.

  • For example, you might have the following sentence: “I used ChatGPT (OpenAI, 2025) to edit my paper and provide feedback on clarity and flow.” You may also provide a general description in the author note, but an in-text citation should still be included in the body of the paper. The reference list would then include an entry for the AI tool as just shown.