Letting tech take the strain
When hospital workers face increased workloads and staffing shortages, their own wellbeing can offer suffer as they concentrate on caring for their patients. New research has examined whether service robots could be employed to help ease the pressures on them and better support their wellbeing at work.
The study looked at hospitals in Denmark and South Korea where the technology has already been deployed. Robots are used to deliver samples and medication, saving staff time and cutting the number of journeys around the hospital they have to make. While there was some initial scepticism about the robots, workers reported having a positive experience with them, despite a few errors since they were introduced.
The survey highlighted how the robot couldn’t be distracted with other tasks while it was delivering samples and its audio alert signals meant it was easier for colleagues to immediately notice its arrival. Some hospital workers also found it to be more efficient and that it helped to decrease their workload. One told researchers: “If a colleague came, I would have to put my task aside and receive those samples. Now that it is the robot coming, I can finish my current task and take care of the robot afterwards.”
Another said they “built up a relationship with the robot, trusting it to do its job without us monitoring it all the time”. However, the research, published in the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, also pointed to the additional demands that can be involved in using robots.
It added: “Service robots in hospital settings do not merely function as resources reducing workloads, they introduce new demands, require personal resources to buffer uncertainty and generate emergent relational resources through anthropomorphism and playful interaction.”
