Changing the Perceived Views of Student Nurses Concerning Healthcare Robots

KEY POINTS The global demand for healthcare robots is increasing and the nursing profession is not exempt from this trend. However, nurses must lead technological transformations concerning their own professional practice. Because nursing students are emerging future clinical leaders, this study was designed to influence student nurses' perceptions about nursing robots. By making students watch real-life video footages of social/nursing robots, we managed to induce a statistically significant change in preintervention and postintervention scores. The authors argue that further research is necessary to evaluate how more complex robot experiences in nurse education will lead to greater adoption of robotics. T he global demand for healthcare robots is already on the rise, with surgical, telepresence, and rehabilitation robots being the largest proportion. Social robots also increased their contribution significantly. As evidenced by Watson et al, the nursing profession is not exempt from this trend. Buchanan et al reported the increasing influence of artificial intelligence or robotics on contemporary nursing practice. In line with that evolution, Watson et al also emphasized that nurses must lead technological transformations concerning their professional practice. However, barriers to the adoption of artificial intelligence or robotics exist. One such may be the culture in which nurses practice. Negative feelings and emotions were also cited as significant obstacles against the inclusion of robots into nursing care. Such negative perceptions may cause fear, which adversely impact on the adoption of care robots. Andtfolk et al therefore supported to help nurses overcome negative thoughts about robotics by maintaining an open mindset for the integration of assistive robots into nursing care. When nurses had positive attitudes, they preferred working with social robots. The ideal point of intervention to learn about robot capabilities and to help embrace caring robots may be nurse education. Bodur et al recognized that student exposure to emerging technologies should be a critical part of nurse education, which helps maximize the potential use of such technologies in the future. Lack of prior preparation, however, may cause a disconnect in nursing staff and can result in undesirable underutilization of modern technologies. Educational experiments, however, are limited. Saadatzi and colleagues, who designed a real-life contact with a robot specimen, reported increased endorsement of robot nurse assistants in general.