Exploring Robot Nurses: Technology, Benefits, and Drawbacks Analysis

This report examines the use of robot nurses in healthcare, highlighting their potential benefits such as assisting bedridden patients with household chores, administering medication, and monitoring cognitive decline. It also addresses critical risks including privacy violations due to surveillance capabilities and dignity concerns stemming from the replacement of human caregivers. The report emphasizes the importance of security measures to prevent hacking and ensure patient safety, particularly for vulnerable populations. It concludes by underscoring the need for careful consideration of ethical implications and robust regulations to mitigate potential harm while leveraging the advantages of robotic assistance in healthcare.

Running head: ROBOT NURSE
Robot Nurse
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Author Note

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Understanding the technology, benefits and drawbacks of robot nurse:
Robot nurses are the robots, helping patients to move physically. They perform activities like
receiving important signals and providing medicine. Some of them also serve as interfaces for
doctors. This is utilized over distances in communicating with different patients.
In this study, various benefits and opportunities brought to various stakeholders are
discussed. Then the drawbacks and risks for the stakeholders are demonstrated.
Opportunity 1:
The nursing robots assist bedridden patients through carrying out laundry services, household
chores. They can also greet patients with human-like patients awakening from sleep. It is also seen
that though at various moments the robots can administer medical treatment to patients, they can also
be programmed to do that (Locsin and Ito 2018).
Opportunity 2:
Further, they can conclusively indicate cognitive issues of decline. For instance, this is by
reminding the care-receiver regarding the time to drink, eat or undertake medication. They are also
helpful to perform exercise and attend an appointment (de Graaf and Malle 2018). These activities
are done through nursing care robots having a huge level of accuracy. This is also done during night
or holidays. This is because they can perform endlessly and never suffer from fatigue or get due due
to boredom.
Risk 1:
The first risk is the privacy issue. The robots can be provided easily with surveillance tools.
For example, this gives them the ability to monitor the patients and record the related data and
communicate information wirelessly. Though the feature is useful at many times to secure aged

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patients through virtual proximity, it also leads to a violation (Lee, Park and Park 2018). Moreover,
without any sufficient regulations, the responsible corporate protocols and policies of the capabilities
can represent a treat to the private life of patients and every individual that has been interacting with
them.
Risk 2:
The second risk is dignity issue. The removal of human caregivers from the care environment
and replacement by robots give rise to significant problems related to the dignity and happiness of
patients. The social interaction is a vital source of intangible value for the development of human
beings. This is enjoyed by patients on different events where nurses make interactions with them
(Han, Kang and Kwon 2017). This presence of human beings entails the value of patients identifying
the patients as a distinct individual, instead of an impersonal entity. It can never be replaced by
robots since the pre-programmed, mechanical properties and the neutral method in interacting with
them.
Summary:
It can be said, that as a matter of fact, avoidance and security of harm is of utmost importance
for the healthcare domain. This is done while utilizing robots due to the involvement of vulnerable
people like the elders, sick ones, or children. Moreover, there is a necessity for developed tools
eliminating or decreasing safety-related failures and eradicating different, unpredictable behaviours.
Here, another significant concern about security is how to place the robots in a secured environment
from getting hacked. As powerful the technology has turned out, it is vital to check the tasks of
hackers who have been exploiting the technology regarding various nefarious tasks.

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References:
de Graaf, M. and Malle, B.F., 2018, March. People's Judgments of Human and Robot Behaviors: A
Robust Set of Behaviors and Some Discrepancies. In Companion of the 2018 ACM/IEEE
International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (pp. 97-98). ACM.
de Graaf, M.M. and Malle, B.F., 2018. People’s Judgments of Human and Robot Behaviors.
Han, J., Kang, H.J. and Kwon, G.H., 2017, June. Understanding the servicescape of nurse assistive
robot: The perspective of healthcare service experience. In Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient
Intelligence (URAI), 2017 14th International Conference on (pp. 644-649). IEEE.
Lee, W., Park, J. and Park, C.H., 2018, March. Acceptability of Tele-assistive Robotic Nurse for
Human-Robot Collaboration in Medical Environment. In Companion of the 2018 ACM/IEEE
International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (pp. 171-172). ACM.
Locsin, R.C. and Ito, H., 2018. Can humanoid nurse robots replace human nurses?. Journal of
Nursing, 5(1), p.1.
Motahar, T., Farden, M.F., Islam, M.A., Rony, R.J. and Sarkar, D.P., 2018, October. Mini Nurse-
Bot: A Healthcare Assistance for Elderly People. In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM International
Joint Conference and 2018 International Symposium on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and
Wearable Computers (pp. 170-173). ACM.
Ojha, S., Williams, M.A. and Johnston, B., 2018. The Essence of Ethical Reasoning in Robot-
Emotion Processing. International Journal of Social Robotics, 10(2), pp.211-223.

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Tamai, T., Majima, Y., Ishigame, A. and Nakayama, M., 2018. Robot Utilization for Nursing
Technical Support Emphasizing Nurse-Patient Synchronization. Studies in health technology and
informatics, 250, pp.139-139.

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