NYSNA to Dr. Oz: AI Avatars are No Match for Nurses!
Untested artificial intelligence (AI) technology is no match for the compassionate care of a nurse or healthcare professional. Unfortunately, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the new administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), started his tenure promoting the use of AI at the agency claiming AI avatars would be cheaper and just as efficient as human workers. This is alarming not only because Dr. Oz has a history of peddling dubious medical advice, but also because he is now in charge of an agency that provides healthcare to millions of Americans, many of whom are some of the most vulnerable patients.
Nurses believe in evidence-based practices, and while we support innovation in technology that helps our patients, we also believe in putting patients over profits. Our patients should not be put at risk so tech billionaires can get richer from rolling out untested AI technology in our hospitals before it has been proven safe and free from bias.
NYSNA and National Nurses United (NNU) have been leading the fight to ensure these technologies are tested and regulated, and that healthcare professionals have a direct say in how they’re used. Across the country, NNU nurses have won strong contract language that safeguards professional clinical judgment and protects patients from unregulated and untested technologies. In many contracts, NNU nurses won the right to bargain over new technology and to have a voice in whether and how new technologies are introduced.
In New York, nurses have won staff nurse-controlled technology committees that have been used to push back against unsafe or ineffective technologies. We are working to leverage those committees to evaluate and respond to AI.
Last September, NYSNA President Nancy Hagans, BSN, RN, CCRN; First Vice President Judith Cutchin, DNP, RN; and Treasurer Margaret Franks, BSN, RN, MEDSURG-BC, attended AI and the Future of Work, an international conference at the Cornell School of Labor Studies, representing National Nurses United (NNU). At the conference, Hagans shared her experience at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn where they have strong contract language that says nurses must be consulted before the hospital fully introduces new technology to the workplace. When Maimonides attempted to introduce an AI-powered thermometer, it had to start as a trial run so it could be tested by nurses. Unsurprisingly, nurses found the technology was faulty. The device listed 30 intensive care unit patients as having the same temperature, but when nurses double-checked the readings using old-fashioned thermometers, they found that several patients had high fevers. Nurses were then able to help those patients and collected evidence that this technology needed more testing before using it on our patients.
But we’re not only organizing our members to win strong contracts, NYSNA has also flexed our collective power in Albany to lobby lawmakers to reject provisions in the Governor’s proposed budget that would have extended programs with unregulated AI. In addition, NYSNA has also run a unionwide member education campaign, including continuing education classes and educational modules at more than 130 hospitals to increase awareness around AI and the risks it poses.
NYSNA members have a message for Dr. Oz: Patients deserve the expert, compassionate, hands-on care that only human nurses can provide. We don’t need TV doctors and tech billionaires pushing untested technology on our patients, we need policies that create protections against the use of AI to de-skill or replace nurses and other healthcare workers. We need leaders who will implement regulations based on the precautionary principle. Right now, unproven AI systems are being deployed in healthcare settings without any evidence for their safety and effectiveness, and often without nurses’ and patients’ knowledge. AI developers and deployers should be required to prove these technologies are safe, effective, and equitable before they’re used in healthcare workplaces.