home
radioMal Fletcher comments on social robots working in care homes.
Continued from page 1
Experience in US hospitals has proven that machines can be of use with relatively routine tasks such as safely dispensing daily medications, for people who might otherwise forget to do so. They have also been used in remote surgery - where a medico in one location guides a remote robotic arm in another.
Machines can also offer a limited form of company for the lonely. On that level, they will prove helpful in care homes.
What happens, however, when over-stretched care facilities, facing rapidly ageing populations and tighter budgets, start relying just a little too much on robots, social or otherwise? They will then experience a form of human entropy.
When an electric kettle is unplugged, its energy is dissipated. This is entropy. Without the application or outside energy, any natural system winds down. The same can happen within human systems.
This is arguably already happening within some care homes in the UK. There are many reputable and caring facilities, but we still read too many news reports about elderly people who are neglected, or worse, badly treated by care workers.
Faced with rapidly ageing populations and without strict internal checks and balances or external government regulation, care homes may start to rely just a little too much on their mechanised helpers.
A two-track approach is needed - not in the near future when social bots are a day-to-day reality in our care homes, but right now.
Alongside the building of machines to improve care, we must develop new regulations and rigorous training schemes for caregivers, to ensure that machines are not over-estimated while the human factor is under-valued.
Early in my professional life I worked as a youth worker and then as a minister leading a local church. Every week for several years I was involved in offering pastoral counsel and support for parishioners and others who faced a range of social, emotional and psychological challenges. On the relatively rare occasion that I came across a serious mental health challenge, I and my team were able to refer folks to trusted professionals.
Developing empathy skills became an important part of my service to the community. I learned very quickly that the practice of true empathy can be hard work, requiring a great deal of mental and emotional engagement.
This is because empathy involves the capacity not simply to sympathise with another person's situation but to share their feelings about it, through imagination.
At its root, empathy is placing oneself firmly in the shoes of another and trying to see the world through their eyes. The goal is not simply to feel for them but to feel with them.
Empathy is of course central to all relationships - friendship, marriage and parenting all benefit from an ability to understand and respond to emotions. Some fortunate people are blessed with an innately high level of emotional intelligence. Yet empathy skills can also be acquired, through study and practice.
For all the programming genius that goes into their production, however, this is one thing that robots - at least as we currently know them - cannot do.
Comment
Bookmark
Tell a friend
Print version
Having worked for years as an agency nurse, across the whole spectrum of nursing practice, and from neonatal to aged care, I can already hear alarm bells ringing. On the one hand, most areas within the health profession are low-staffed, and existing staff are therefore pushed for time. This means that contact time with patients is limited. Added to this, nursing training these days takes place in the classroom, where teaching is geared towards a degree in nursing. Practical experience usually consists of working under supervision over the Christmas holiday break (if you're lucky) and is both limited and narrow in scope.
Added to this is the heavy workload of existing nursing staff, where patient contact is often impersonal and limited to the giving of medications, the carrying out of routine medical procedures, and administration of hygiene. Already there is a serious lack of empathy and human touch involved. In fact, having a meaningful conversation with a patient is often frowned upon.
If robots are introduced, workloads of staff may well be reduced, but it is highly doubtful that any time saved would be spent with patients. When you are seriously ill, simple things such as a listening ear, meaningful touch and expressions of empathy carry enormous significance. No robot is able to deliver these as effectively as a caring human being. Certainly medical robots can ease the burden on staff by carrying out rote tasks of all kinds. But we need to leave the caring and empathy to those who understand and empathize, just because they are human.