AI Is No Replacement for a Nurse’s Intuition
June 28, 2023 4:11 pm ET Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto I see artificial intelligence simply as another tool to help us provide better care to our patients (“Nurses Clash With AI Over Patient Care,” Page One, June 16). From a stethoscope to an electrocardiogram, tools provide information that, together with my clinical judgment, knowledge and experience, help me make the proper diagnosis and decide on the appropriate treatment. Relying too much on any one modality, including AI, could lead to incorrect diagnoses and treatments. The wide-ranging possibilities and “black box” nature of AI raise the danger of over-exuberance in some people and fear in others. We need a little of both. Especially in the early days, AI will be no substitute for astute clinical judgment. This was made clear to me last year when my grandson was born prematurely in London. One ni
Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto
I see artificial intelligence simply as another tool to help us provide better care to our patients (“Nurses Clash With AI Over Patient Care,” Page One, June 16). From a stethoscope to an electrocardiogram, tools provide information that, together with my clinical judgment, knowledge and experience, help me make the proper diagnosis and decide on the appropriate treatment. Relying too much on any one modality, including AI, could lead to incorrect diagnoses and treatments.
The wide-ranging possibilities and “black box” nature of AI raise the danger of over-exuberance in some people and fear in others. We need a little of both. Especially in the early days, AI will be no substitute for astute clinical judgment.
This was made clear to me last year when my grandson was born prematurely in London. One night in the neonatal intensive-care unit, an experienced nurse thought “something wasn’t right” about how his blood was clotting after his many pinprick blood tests. On a hunch, she sent off specialized laboratory tests and discovered that he had severe hemophilia. If she hadn’t pursued that intuition, the problem might not have been diagnosed for weeks or months, and he might have been in danger of severe bleeding from simple manipulations and blood tests.
Anthony Mercando, M.D.
Bronxville, N.Y.
I’ve been a nurse for 43 years, and I have been told that I have great instincts for early detection of problems with patients. These instincts are based on tools and facts I have learned over the years. Just as I depend on things like blood pressure, temperature and lab results, I use the algorithms to tell me who is deteriorating and needs intervention. Should an algorithm not seem to fit the patient’s situation, it is my job to inform the attending physician so that the proper treatment will occur.
Algorithms have been an incredible addition to our arsenal in catching problems early. We aren’t using magical hunches; we are using science.
Sherry Flynn
Bradenton, Fla.
UC Davis Medical Center’s nurses are among the best in the nation, and we trust their judgment over tech tools, which don’t replace humans but improve patient care and reduce errors. Every healthcare provider quoted in the article stated that care decisions are made by people, not AI, and that technology is simply a tool to aid human decision-making.
The sepsis algorithm that a nurse complained about in the article has produced one of the nation’s lowest sepsis-mortality rates. A nurse also complained about having to use a medication-error-prevention tool (which isn’t AI) that matches up patients and medicine according to a physician’s order. Proper nursing practice isn’t overriding a physician’s plan of care without permission, but rather calling the physician to discuss changing the plan of care if she saw it was ineffective.
J. Douglas Kirk,
Chief Medical Officer UC Davis Medical Center Sacramento, Calif.
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