Man Dies After Receiving Diagnosis Through A Robot

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

A 78-year-old man in California died a day after receiving the news of his lung failure from a robot. Ernest Quintana learned of his impending death through a video call at a Kaiser Permanente hospital.

According to the daughter of the deceased, Catherine Quintana, the way her father received the news was devastating.

"My dad's reaction was, 'Then I think I'm going to [die] quickly,' and he bowed his head. That was it, "Catherine told ABC. "The doctors told him that he no longer had lungs and that he needed comfort care. That would involve a dose of morphine until he died."

The forecast, which itself would have been difficult to accept, became even more painful due to the way the news was delivered. Annalisa Quintanta, the patient's granddaughter, was present when a robot entered her grandfather's hospital room to give him the bad news. Annalisa, 33, took out her phone and recorded the interaction in order to transmit the information to the rest of her family. What she never expected is that they were alerting her grandfather to her death in such an inhuman way.

“The [grandfather] couldn't understand the man. I couldn't hear it. The robot did not fully enter the room, it could only go that far because it is a large machine and it could not get close enough. So there was no behavior with a sick person, there was no compassion. I was reading a script, "said the young woman.

In the video recorded by the young woman, a hospital employee can be seen behind the robot, while the doctor talks to the patient through a monitor.

"I think for general care, someone who comes to remove the tonsils or for the results of simple exams, it's fine [the robot]. But not for people who are dying. For people who are at the end of their life, it is not good,”said Annalisa.

For his part, Kaiser Permanente defended himself from what happened and accepted that he uses technology to treat patients, but that part of his policy implies that a doctor or nurse always be present in the room.

“The video conversation that night was a follow-up to a doctor's in-person visit and was not used to deliver the initial diagnosis. We regret that our use of video calls did not meet the expectations of the Quintana family for a compassionate experience, "the hospital said in a statement. "Our patients are our priority at Kaiser Permanente, which is why the story that has been reported in the last 24 hours about a 'diagnosis through a robot' is heartbreaking and shocking."

The Quintana family hopes that this experience will change hospital policy and allow patients to choose to be treated by a doctor in person or through a robot.