Robots are no longer fictional objects we read about in novels or saw on the silver screen. From serving food to customers in a restaurant in Chennai to doing routine desk work at a police headquarters in Kerala, robots are now ‘living’ among us. The fact that we’re able to create these machines to perform tasks for us is absolutely incredible. But are there certain jobs that should not be delegated to them because they lack a human touch? If you think that there isn’t one, then this incident might change your mind.
Ernest Quintana was a 78-year-old patient at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, California. He was informed by his doctor that he was dying in the most unusual way – through a robotic tele-video device. A friend of the patient’s daughter shared the incident on Facebook.
Please share this…. This was regarding a friends Dad a couple of hours ago. This is not the way to show value and…
Posted by Julianne Spangler on Wednesday, March 6, 2019
This video shows the doctor ‘talking’ to the patient about terminating his aggressive treatments and shifting him to morphine-based comfort care.
Needless to say that Ernest Quintana’s family wasn’t pleased with the hospital. His wife wasn’t with him when the news was delivered. When she found out and complained about it, the staff told her that it was standard policy. Unfortunately, Mr. Quintana passed away shortly after this incident.
While robots are a boon to us in the field of medicine, everyone (including the patient’s family) believes that this was extremely out of line. A dying man should be informed of his deteriorating health in person. The doctor should’ve shown him the basic courtesy of discussing his final options face to face and with his wife present in the room. We sincerely hope that what happened with Mr. Quintana does not happen with anyone else. There are some things that robots just cannot do.