Introduction:
AI nursing assistants are emerging at breakneck speed into the marketplace as the nursing sector seeks transformative options to lessen the load of task-oriented day-to-day operations while increasing efficiency and quality of care. Yet with anticipated developments further in the AI realm, AI nursing assistants and nursing replacements are not the answer. Empowering nurses and the workforce with the possibilities of AI will only enhance what they already do with great skill and great compassion for a humanistic approach to care. This article investigates the greatest potential actions for AI empowerment for the nursing profession.
Potential Uses for AI in Nursing
Nursing assistants with AI capabilities are already being developed to support human nurses. For example, a new announcement from Hippocratic AI seeks to combine many off-the-shelf robotic and sensing components which minimize costs under $10,000 to employ such computers in the field. The findings of the latest studies substantiated by the New York Times reveal that within lab test simulations, AI nursing assistants can accomplish required tasks (sensing patient heart rates and blood pressure) faster and more successfully than human nurses, likely to become distracted.
The ability of an AI nurse to predict the needs of patients works in its favor. For instance, by reviewing a patient's history and symptoms related to other conditions, AI can spot trends and suggest further testing that could help in diagnosing something early. An AI nurse could notify its human counterparts and make them aware of the possibilities that lie within—which opens doors to proactive, preventative nursing long before what could be viewed as a minor problem becomes a major one. Such early diagnoses mean lower costs and better patient treatment.
Yet, where an AI nurse could assist with this little nugget of nursing, it will never be able to replace a human practitioner in their specific fields of health care. AI lacks empathy and the human compassion that only a human nurse can provide. Where patients seek more than assessments, more than diagnosis and treatment plans, they seek emotional comfort, advocacy, heart and soul—things that no AI nurse will be able to provide.
Nurses advocate for patients in small ways and great, for microprocessing and macro ideas. They function as the conduit between the patient and doctor/multidisciplinary approach. They can help the patient feel less threatened in an otherwise sterile environment and become the voice that hears the need when and where it can. This is not something that can come from the greatest databank of AI or most realistic AI protocol; this is what it means to be human.
The notion of AI nurses should not be an anticipated replacement for current nursing staff, but rather, it should be a concept that uses AI as a tremendous supplement to alleviate nursing staff from tedious workloads and give them more time on the floor to care for patients in the quality nursing ways they've been trained—human compassion efforts—face to face.
AI nurses could relieve human nurses of:
Monitoring and evaluating patient information
Scheduling appointments
Scheduling medications
Documenting patients
But all human nurses and qualified medical personnel should assess what patients require. AI should be an addition to what is expected for improved efficiency for both nurses and patients.
FAQs:
A: AI nurses will never replace human nurses. While AI can take over a wide range of responsibilities, it will never replicate the quality of care that human compassion, patient advocacy, and personalized treatment provide—even by the most inexperienced human nurse.
Q: How will AI nurses work with human nurses?
A: AI nurses should work side-by-side as planned tools to augment and advocate for the work of human nurses—not to supplant it. Nurses are at their best when engaged with patients. AI can assume all low-hanging, repetitive activities that need to be done before nurses can focus their attention on compassionate, humanistic care.
Q: Where do AI nurses fall short in providing patient care?
A: AI nurses fall short in providing patient care primarily because they cannot feel and respond compassionately. They cannot provide warmth and personal levels of care that human nurses experience naturally. While AI can assess and evaluate virtually any amount of data, it cannot serve as an advocate like a human nurse.
Conclusion:
The concept of AI nurses would be both positive and negative. AI could complete a lot of nursing tasks and improve patient interaction and outcomes. Still, it cannot replace a human provider—too much care and compassion is associated with nursing that requires a real person to deliver, assess needs, and be advocates for patients beyond anything AI could ever imagine. Nursing is a scientific practice as much as it is an art, including emotional intelligence and soft skills.If the health care industry were to consider pursuing the idea of AI nurses, the intention should be to medically and technologically upgrade the human nurse experience to better support and empower real nurses—but never to take their place.