How Cara Works

Cara is an in-app assistant (text and voice) that helps you prepare, learn, reflect, and grow. She explains nursing concepts, runs quick practice questions, curates your Daily Brief, and helps you reflect after a shift.

Cara can explain general nursing concepts, terms, scales, and frameworks (like SBAR), run NCLEX-style practice questions with rationales, curate a short personalized Daily Brief, help you think through a shift, and talk with you by voice or text.

Cara is education-first. She does not diagnose, treat, or give medical advice; does not make decisions about a specific patient (dosing, titration, hold/give, interpretation); does not replace your clinical judgment, current orders, or facility policy; and does not handle emergencies. If you describe a real patient or ask for patient-specific direction, Cara steers back to general education. NurseCircle is not for emergencies — follow your facility's procedures or contact emergency services. If you're in crisis, Cara points you to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Cara is designed for professional growth, not patient records. The app actively blocks patient-identifying information (names, room numbers, MRNs, dates of birth) before it reaches Cara. Please don't enter real patient details anywhere in NurseCircle.

Cara personalizes learning and guidance using information you choose to share, your NurseCircle activity, and optional personalization settings. Some features require separate opt-in before they are used for personalization.

Growth Insights are generated using predefined rules and your activity patterns. They are designed to help you reflect on your learning and habits. They are not medical advice and are not an evaluation of your clinical performance.

Cara may use:

• profile details you choose to provide (specialty, role, experience, interests, goals)
• eligible NurseCircle activity you allow (learning and preparation activity)
• optional Cara Insights settings you turn on
• your recent conversation, and saved conversation history, to answer the chat you're in

Cara does not use private messages or reflection free text for Growth Insights. (To answer a chat message, that message is sent to our AI provider — see "Conversation history" below; Growth Insights use only structured activity data, never the wording of anything you write.)

Separate opt-in: reflection categories and nursing-topic counts are off by default and require separate opt-in before they are included in Cara Insights.

How insights are made: Growth Insights are created from predefined rules and minimum evidence thresholds. An AI model does not write or invent these insight claims. (Cara's chat replies do use an AI model — the two are separate.)

You can manage, pause, or clear eligible personalization anytime from the Cara Insights controls in the app.

When you're signed in, your Cara chats are saved to your account so you can pick up where you left off — you can delete them. If you use Cara as a guest, your chats are stored only on your device, not on our servers. To generate each reply, your message (and limited context you choose to include) is sent securely to our AI provider.

Cara Memory is off by default. If you turn it on, Cara keeps a short set of things like your goals and interests on your device to personalize responses. It never includes patient information, you can view, edit, or clear it anytime, and it clears if you sign out or remove the app. While memory is on, a brief summary of it travels with your Cara chats as context (see "Conversation history" above); turn memory off and it stops.

Your microphone is used only when you choose to speak or record. Audio is sent securely to our AI provider to turn speech into text and to generate Cara's spoken replies. Voice notes you save are stored in your account and deleted when you delete your account.

Cara's responses are generated by a third-party AI provider (OpenAI). NurseCircle also uses Google Firebase (accounts, database, storage) and Sentry (diagnostics). We do not use advertising or cross-app tracking. See our Privacy Policy for the full list.

You can:

• enable or disable Cara Insights
• choose which eligible activity types Cara may use
• pause new insight generation
• hide individual insights
• clear Cara Insights entirely
• pause or clear Cara Memory
• delete individual conversations, or your whole account (Profile → Settings → Delete Account)

Cara is for education, preparation, reflection, and professional growth. Cara does not replace clinical judgment, current provider orders, facility policy, or emergency services.