INTRODUCTION:

What Is Robotic Nursing?

According to Merriam Webster, Robot is “a machine that resembles a living creature in being capable of moving independently (as by walking or rolling on wheels) and performing complex actions (such as grasping and moving objects)”.

In simple words, Robotic Nursing is ‘using machines (robots) for the daily nursing activities in order to reduce the nurse’s burnout and errors in the nursing practice, assisting in daily nursing activities and doing physical work like lifting heavy instruments, transferring the patient, etc.’

Need of Robotics in Nursing:

The best patient care is only possible when all the care-givers work as a team and possess the optimum level of health.

The nurses are the back-bone of the health-care facility. It is vital for the nurses to be physically and emotionally sound at their work place to provide quality care to all the patients. A study on Relationship of Compassion Satisfaction, Compassion Fatigue and Burnout among Nurses concludes that all the samples (80) had average amount of burnout, 83.75% of compassion fatigue and 90.47% of compassion satisfaction.

Everyday nurses deal with physical and emotional strains. Physical strain includes long working hours, heavy lifting and manual tasks, frequent standing and walking and exposure to infectious diseases whereas emotional strain includes emotional demands, workload and responsibility, compassion fatigue and dealing with loss and death. Certain tasks which can be easily done by a machine must be transferred in order to reduce the physical strain among nurses.

Robots or Health-bots can be a best replacement to reduce certain types of workloads and eliminate various stress and strain among nurses. Using robots can also decrease the prevalence of Musculo-skeletal and lifestyle diseases among nurses.

Robots as an Aid for Nurses:

1. Ease The Burden on Nursing Staff

· It eases the burden on nurses by serving as supplemental healthcare workers by performing tasks like distributing meals, shifting things from one place to another, discarding waste according to the rules, etc.

· It provides reminders for the nurses for medications, tube feedings, sending morning samples, etc.

· It can be used for exact monitoring and make a cumulative record of it for each patient in the ward.

· Robots preserve dignity of the patients. Some patients find help with toileting humiliating. Robots can be a good substitute.

· Robots is a machine and it’s not hard for a machine to repeat a same thing again and again for which humans are considered less patient.

· Using health-bots to enter the basic patient information makes the data more accessible.

· Vitals, physical examinations, etc., can be done by robots that can be compiled and used as data to understand the pattern of specific diagnostic conditions. This data can be used to predict the risk, behaviors, signs and symptoms of the similar potential patients.

2. Socially and Physically Assistive Robots:

· A socially-assistive robot is capable of social interaction. Potential uses of socially-assistive robots are: (i) companion robots; (ii) supporting adults with dementia; (iii) motivating physical exercise; and (iv) providing post-stroke rehabilitation.

· These robots can be a good companion for elderly population, giving home-care, reading news and entertainment information as well. These are feel-good robots which assist and motivates people to adopt healthy life-style in their later years of life.

· Old age comes with diseases and lack of physical ability. Physically assistive robots enhance the quality of life of elderly and other in-capable patients by doing activities like eating and drinking (feeding assistive devices); personal care (washing, shaving, applying cosmetics); handling objects (books, devices); mobility and access (opening doors); general reaching and moving tasks.

3. Tele-Robotics:

· Telerobots helps nurses and doctors to consult the patient via bidirectional video conferencing. It makes doctors/nurses to appear on the screen of the robots and assist to assess current clinical status of the patient.

· Real-time E-medical charts can be accessed by the medical practitioners by using robot-mounted device equipped with vital signs acquisition capabilities.

· It aids geriatric population to remain socially engaged, and make doctors, nurses, and relatives to make virtual visits them.

· This gives a feeling of closeness and maintain the social circle for the patients (mainly elderly).

· Tele-nursing utilizes tele-robotics in providing care in the form of education, consultations, tele-equipment in remote areas.

· Shortage of nursing staff and high turn-over of staffs can be managed by tele-robotics.

4. Robots In The Times Of Pandemic

· As we all witnessed the deaths of many healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic, robots can be a better substitute for providing care to quarantined patient at hospitals and at home also.

· Robots, as a machine will be un-affected by the infection without any fear of transmitting the disease to other professionals.

· The robot can record all the data of quarantined patients which can be accessible to other professionals (humans) via the internet or intranet.

· Robots can bridge a gap between infected patients and nursing professionals during the pandemic and can lessen the risk of infection transmission.

· Food, linens, basic monitoring (vital signs), disinfection along with video recording of the ward to monitor patients are certain tasks which can be done by the robots very easily.

· Introduction of Robots like MITHRA which was used to screen the patients, doctors, nurses, etc while entering inside the hospital at Fortis Hospital, Bannerghatta Road, Bangalore.

HEALTH-BOTS USED IN INDIA:

· Mitra Robot: Mitra, developed by Invento Robotics, has been used in hospitals and healthcare facilities in various cities across India, including Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai.

· Maitri Robot: Maitri, developed by GenRobotics, has been deployed in hospitals and care centers in cities like Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, and Gurugram.

· Tricog: Tricog's AI-powered health solution is used in multiple cities across India, including Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata. The system provides rapid cardiac diagnosis and expert opinions remotely.

· SastaSundar Healthbuddy: SastaSundar Healthbuddy, an AI health robot, is used in various locations across India, including Kolkata, Mumbai, and Delhi, to provide personalized health advice and medication reminders.

· YourDOST: YourDOST is a mental health chatbot that offers emotional support and counseling. It helps users cope with stress, anxiety, and various mental health concerns by providing personalized guidance and resources.

· Lybrate: Lybrate is an online healthcare platform that includes a health bot feature. It allows users to consult doctors, get medical advice, and receive personalized health recommendations.

· Niki.ai: Niki.ai is an AI-powered chatbot that offers healthcare services, including booking doctor appointments, ordering medicines, and providing health-related information to users.

· Visit: Visit is a health bot designed to assist patients in scheduling doctor appointments, managing medical records, and receiving follow-up care reminders.

CHALLENGES:

1. Costs- Initially placing robots in an Indian setting would be a challenging task. It takes more investment of money, man and time for training the staff for the usage of robots.

2. The Human Touch- If I ask you to take a pill which substitutes the consumption of water, what will you choose? A pill with all the minerals and qualities of water or ‘water’. You will obviously choose water, because it will quench your thirst and give you a particular feeling. Similarly, nothing can beat a human touch, understanding, warm feeling and the feeling of companionship. Robots are just a machine that will complete all your tasks but it lacks that warm feeling.

3. Ethical Decision making- For example, A robot is assigned to ensure proper medications for a patient, but if a patient refuses a particular medicine for a legitimate reason of which the robot is unaware (indigestion, dizziness). In this case, critical thinking ability and ethical decision making are needed to avoid despair. As we know, the patient has the right to refuse the medicine and the human nurse will respect that despite hampering the care. The human nurse will take advice from seniors and try to replace that particular medicine with a drug that has fewer side-effects. For a robot to comprehend this is a tedious process until we install that program into it.

4. Language and Cultural Barriers: Health bots may face challenges in understanding regional dialects, accents, or cultural nuances, which can hinder effective communication with patients from diverse backgrounds. Language barriers can also affect the accuracy of information provided and the quality of care delivered.

5. Mis-use of data- Data stored in robots is easily accessible by the professionals and also by the patients that can be mis-used.

CONCLUSION:

In a country like India, which has a huge population and shortage of medical professionals, robots become a great choice to be deployed as an assistant for human nurses. Robots come with various advantages like doing physical activities, lifting and shifting heavy objects, distributing meals, transferring patients, ensuring proper care of the patient, etc. But being technologically advanced doesn’t replace the qualities of humans like decision making abilities, critical thinking and warmth. Installing robots in Indian Hospitals can be a challenging task but in contrary to this Robots can reduce nurses’ overload, burnout and medical errors.

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Received on 31.05.2023 Modified on 04.07.2023

Asian J. Nursing Education and Research. 2023; 13(4):317-320.

DOI: 10.52711/2349-2996.2023.00065