Recent decades are notable for comprehensive globalization processes that brought about the Internet and, therefore, the availability of loads of information to businesses and individuals. Easily accessible news and scholarly knowledge significantly simplify humans’ lives and decrease the time required to find a useful piece of information in offline sources. However, the Internet may also provide misleading or factually inaccurate data, and it may be difficult to detect useful information in the pile of non-reliable data. With the challenges that globalization and AI pose to their profession, nurses may, however, use machines to their advantage – to filter information required for decision-making.
Nurses have been known as the core of the health care system as they both account for the largest number of workers in the sphere and significantly affect their patients’ performance. As decision-making is of primary importance for nurses, a decision support system may help them to make appropriate choices “by leveraging databases,” while “the computing capability of AI will facilitate decision-making processes” (Liao et al., 2015, p. 139). IT may enhance the accuracy of data collecting and recording, and if faulty information has become part of the overall information database, it is computer algorithms that are best for detecting it. The more data enters the AI system, the better the algorithm becomes, so machines are becoming especially efficient in recognizing faulty information. Another way of reducing the risk of faulty data becoming part of the overall database may be following organized structures of blanks.
The advent of AI and the increasing implementation of technology in the medical system pose a significant challenge for nursing. Current healthcare organizational changes are decreasing the human factor in the treatment process and substituting it with machines as they are more objective than humans (Salmond & Echevarria, 2017). If the trend continues, in the future, nurses may have to support computers rather than be supported by them. However, patients tend to value a human factor, so nurses may continue to provide them with patient-centered and quality-driven health care.
Summing up, in recent years, the healthcare system has been altered by the implementation of machines, and it modifies the role of nursing. However, nurses may take advantage of AI by using it to filter information in databases as well as structure data about their patients. Computers are an indispensable component of future medicine, and they should be combined with nursing to provide both effective treatment and a human factor.
References
Liao, P.-H., Hsu, P.-T., Chu, W., & Chu, W.-C. (2015). Applying artificial intelligence technology to support decision-making in nursing: A case study in Taiwan. Health Informatics Journal, 21(2), 137–148. Web.
Salmond, S., & Echevarria, M. (2017). Healthcare transformation and changing roles for nursing. Orthopedic Nursing, 36(1), 12-25.