Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare: prioritizes efficiency over patient care. “They see us as machines.”
The integration of artificial intelligence (IA) in health is transform the functioning of hospitals, but also to get up concerns among the professionals.
Michael Kennedy, a nurse of neurological intensive care in San Diego, shares his fear regarding the growing dependence on AI, which he fears could compromise nurses’ skills, intuition and autonomy.
Kennedy works in a neurological intensive care unit, where patients often face long and challenging recoveries after brain injuries, strokes or neurosurgery.
A function requires not only technical skills, but also intuition e critical thinking, what do you consider irreplaceable by machines.
However, you have noticed a gradual shift to AI-supported tools, starting with basic systems that monitor compliance with procedures.
These tools, initially introduced to prevent errors, have evolved into complex AI programs that directly influence decision making.
In 2018, your hospital implemented a system of AI to evaluate the “gravity do patient”, that is, the level of care that each patient needs.
Before, they were nurses that determined this manually, which gave them control over resource planning and the number of staff required.
AI has replaced this process with opaque algorithms, leaving the confused nurses in relation to the scores generated.
This change reduced ability to effectively advocate for patient care and turned the decisions of allocation of personnel less transparent.
More recently, the hospital introduced the “Environmental Record”, an AI tool designed to record interactions with patients and generate notes.
Presented as a solution to alleviate doctors’ fatigue, the system generated Surveillance and data security fears among the team.
Kennedy notes that while the promise of simplifying documentation is appealing, these systems often prioritize efficiency over patient care.
It argues that the search for efficiency in healthcare, driven by the ideals of Silicon Valley, ignores the need for redundancy and human oversight.
AI tools, such as alert systems for conditions like sepsis, aim to reduce errors, but often interrupt workflows with poorly timed notifications.
Kennedy fears that these systems, although well-intentioned, risk turning healthcare professionals into mere machine operatorsdepriving them of the experience necessary to develop critical thinking and intuition.
Kennedy’s main concern is that future generations of nurses could lose essential skills as they become increasingly dependent on AI.
Alert that health must prioritize human judgment and redundancy over automation, as patient lives are too valuable for efficiency to be achieved at the expense of safety and experience.
“I believe technology leaders imagine a world where they can crack the code of human disease and automate everything based on algorithms. They just see us as machines that can be understood“, ends the outburst.
