Robotics is the new controversial hot topic that everyone is talking about! Every professional fears this new technology will put them out of a job. Everywhere you look, you have machines replacing manual work that was once labored by a human being. Rather than friendly checkers ringing us up and bagging our groceries, we are now presented with self-checkout stands. Robotics is also finding its way into the fast food industry. Robots are seen cooking burgers and other food items to the perfect and safe temperature. Will robots replace nurses in the future? It’s a question I have had on my mind lately. We have already seen considerable advancements in robotics in the healthcare field. Cutting-edge operating room technologies include nanosurgery using nanorobots, intelligent fabrics that aid patient assessment during surgery, bio-pharmacy techniques for safe and effective anesthesia delivery, and virtual reality training (McGonigle, Mastrian, pg 13). Some hospital systems also use dispensing robots to ensure accurate and timely medication dispensing. Using technology like this helps prevent human error from occurring. When it comes to nursing, a big fear is whether humanoid robotics can replace a nurse’s caring hand or touch. Nursing robots can “serve as supplemental healthcare workers in hospitals, older-person care facilities, and at home (Soriano et al., 2022). Robotics can help with time-consuming, monotonous tasks. But robotics can never replace a human nurse’s presence during a patient’s death or that comforting hand to coach them to slow their breathing while they’re hooked up to a ventilator and scared. Scenarios such as this are why human nurses continue to be vital to a patient’s recovery process.
References
Soriano, G. P., Yasuhara, Y., Ito, H., Matsumoto, K., Osaka, K., Kai, Y., Locsin, R., Schoenhofer, S., & Tanioka, T. (2022). Robots and robotics in nursing. Healthcare, 10(8), 1571. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare10081571