Nursing News: Ai In Nursing — The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

By Nurse Blake

FIRST, THE COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS and coders started sweating about being replaced by AI. Then, it was the writers worrying about AI coming for their jobs. And now, nurses? Could robots be coming for our jobs?

According to a press release, NVIDIA, a tech company, teamed up with a healthcare startup called Hippocratic AI to create AI "agents" that are supposed to be like robot nurses! These voice-based bots can chat with patients and give basic medical advice.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for new technology that can help people get better medical care. But are these AI "agents" really the answer?

THE GOOD: AI TO THE RESCUE?

According to the press release, Hippocratic's AI model, called Constellation, outperformed human nurses in several areas:

• Identifying a medication's effect on lab values: 79% for the AI, 63% for nurses.
• Identifying OTC medications that should not be used by patients with specific medical conditions: 88% for the AI, 45% for nurses.
• Correctly comparing lab values to reference ranges: 96% for the AI, 93% for nurses.
• Detecting toxic doses of OTC drugs: 81% for the AI, 57% for nurses.

Y’all already know the struggle. The staffing shortages are no joke! Some days, it feels like we’re barely keeping our heads above water, and we’re being pulled in a million different directions. It’s exhausting!

If an AI bot could help by automating some of the dry administrative tasks, like documenting visits, scheduling appointments, entering data, and freeing us up to spend more quality face time with our patients, hey, I'm all for it! Honestly, anything that can lighten our workloads and allow us to really focus on providing the compassionate, personal care we're trained to provide would be a total blessing.

As the backbone of healthcare, nurses must have a seat at the table when it comes to shaping the future of our industry.

THE BAD: KEEP THE BOTS, I WANT REAL NURSES!

Maybe these AI buddies could handle giving out basic advice for minor sniffles or something. But could they really provide the true personal care that we nurses pride ourselves on?

And the whole idea of patients dealing with AI nurses instead of humans is kind of a tricky one. How might patients actually respond to that?

Patients love having that personal connection with their nurse! They want someone caring and compassionate who really gets them as individuals. Especially for older patients, I could totally see them feeling pretty weirded out by the idea of spilling their private health details to some robot instead of an actual person. They may not trust this AI “agent” thing or feel like it truly understands their unique situation.

Yet, the younger crowd, the more tech-savvy patients, might be more open to working with AI nurses. They may really appreciate the convenience and efficiency it could provide. No fussing with scheduling or waiting forever; just zap, there's your AI nurse!

It'll probably also depend a lot on the type of care we're talking about. For really empathy-driven situations like nursing homes or peds, I just can't picture patients and families being totally comfortable without human nurses in the mix.

THE UGLY: PENNY-PINCHING PATIENT CARE

But before we get too carried away crowning these AI bots as the new kings and queens of nursing, let's remember that nursing is a whole lot more than just checking off those kinds of isolated task boxes. There's critical thinking, judgment calls, handling unexpected situations — all the nuances that really separate good nurses from great ones.

Sure, these AI bots might be able to spit out some automated health advice or do a basic check-in okay. But what happens when a patient has an unexpected issue or complication? Do you really think an AI “agent” is going to be able to think on its feet (LOL! Do they have feet?) and handle those nuanced situations?

Come on now! We nurses have years of training, real-world experience, and, most importantly, good old-fashioned human compassion that no robot could ever replicate.

Plus, y’all know I’m thinking it! Hospitals could totally go overboard with these robots. When hospital administrators see how cheap the AI bots are — a measly $9 an hour compared to an average of $41 an hour for a human nurse, they might think they’ve found a nice little loophole to nickel-and-dime patient care.

While the idea behind these AI bots is to help address the nursing shortage, if hospitals bring in AI “agents” but then drastically increase the number of patients each nurse is responsible for, it could actually make our workloads even more overwhelming. The AI may be able to handle basic tasks, but nurses would be left struggling to properly care for and connect with each patient on a human level.

NURSES: TIME TO GET INVOLVED ONCE AGAIN!

I've got some mixed feelings about this whole thing. On one hand, it's pretty darn impressive that technology has come this far. I mean, who would've thought we'd have AI “agents” one day? But on the other hand, we know these bots can’t provide the same level of care and compassion that we human nurses do. And let’s not forget about how, instead of helping with the nursing shortage, this innovation can potentially make things worse if hospital administrators see these AI “agents” as a cheaper alternative to human nurses.

As the backbone of healthcare, nurses must have a seat at the table when it comes to shaping the future of our profession. We can't afford to sit back and let others make decisions that could fundamentally change the way we work and care for our patients.

We need nurses to be right there in the mix, making sure our voices are heard. These technologies need to be developed and implemented in a way that enhances, rather than detracts from, the critical role we play in delivering high-quality, compassionate care. Because at the end of the day, we're the ones who know what it takes to provide top-notch care to our patients, and we can't let anyone else dictate how we do our jobs. So, let's get involved and make sure these new tools are working for us, not against us.

What do you all think about this? Is this the future of healthcare, or are we heading down a slippery slope?

Sources:
Hippocratic AI. (2024, March 18). Hippocratic AI Announces Collaboration with NVIDIA to Develop Super-Low-Latency “Empathy Inference” for One of the World’s First Generative AI-Powered Healthcare Agents [Press release]. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/644f377bcdcff95fb90fd4a5/t/65f89c4397bc677dfc9122 7f/1710791747565/Press+Release_NVIDIA+Partnership.pdf

Hippocratic AI. (n.d.). Hear our GenAI Healthcare Agents in Action. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2024). Registered Nurses.