Bioethical aspects of robotics in surgery

Elena Vvedenskaya

doi:10.21860/j.12.1.7

Abstract

The article discusses the bioethical aspects of robotics in surgery and assesses the impact of this process on the relationship between the physician and the patient. An engineering model is gradually replacing the traditional paternalistic model of the physician-patient relationship. If paternalism implies the doctor’s attitude to the patient as his sick child, which requires compassion, help, and great responsibility on the part of the doctor, then when implementing the second model, the doctor, like a technical executor, performs only the responsibilities provided by the job description. On the one hand, the dominance of a technical-type model carries the threat of depersonalizing the patient and eliminating contact between the physician and the patient. On the other hand, this contributes to a radical change in the concept of medicine. Why people usually go to doctors? For establishing a diagnosis, prescribing a course of treatment, a prescription, and performing medical manipulations? Machines, leaving a human with a completely different role in the relationship between the physician and the patient, will increasingly perform these actions. The release of doctors from routine tasks will allow them to pay more attention to patient care, fully demonstrating their human qualities. The article analyzes the surgeon’s place in modern medicine and makes an attempt to determine which category the surgery belongs to, “machine territory” or “human territory”.

Highlights

Over the past 20 years, medicine has seen rapid growth in robotics, leading to the automation of many processes and, as a result, to the transformation of traditional relationships between a doctor and a patient
The article discusses the bioethical aspects of robotics in surgery and assesses the impact of this process on the relationship between the physician and the patient
If paternalism implies the doctor’s attitude to the patient as his sick child, which requires compassion, help, and great responsibility on the part of the doctor, when implementing the second model, the doctor, like a technical executor, performs only the responsibilities provided by the job description

Summary

Introduction

Over the past 20 years, medicine has seen rapid growth in robotics, leading to the automation of many processes and, as a result, to the transformation of traditional relationships between a doctor and a patient. Veatch, this traditional model of physician-patient relationship has been gradually replaced by an engineering model that has arisen because of the biological revolution, which promotes the spread of the type of an impartial doctor-scientist who must rely on facts, avoiding value judgments. This traditional model of physician-patient relationship has been gradually replaced by an engineering model that has arisen because of the biological revolution, which promotes the spread of the type of an impartial doctor-scientist who must rely on facts, avoiding value judgments When implementing this model, the doctor treats the patient as a broken machine, and he becomes a technician who cleans the clogged body systems. “It would make him an engineer, a plumber making repairs, connecting tubes and flushing out clogged systems, with no questions asked”.1 The dominance of a technical-type model can lead to the further depersonalization of the patient and to the elimination of contact between the physician and the patient and, as a result, to the replacement of most doctors with AI systems and robots

Surgical robots

Vvedenskaya

Surgery: “machine territory” or “human territory”?

From a survey of Russian surgeons about attitudes towards robots

Findings

Conclusion