The Functional Requirements of Person-Centred Fundamental Care: Evaluating Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Against a Depleted Baseline.

AIM: To propose provisional, theory-informed questions for evaluating whether artificial intelligence and robotic deployments support person-centred fundamental care when current practice is depleted.

DESIGN

Discursive theoretical paper.

METHODS

Purposive conceptual synthesis of fundamental care scholarship, selected behavioural and developmental theories, vulnerability scholarship, and illustrative technology evidence.

RESULTS

Three lenses generate provisional questions about patient-specific meaning, connections among care activities over time, and the conditions sustaining responsive care. A separate ethical argument holds that delegating activities does not discharge professional or institutional obligations to patients. Applications to adaptive monitoring, social interaction, generative dialogue, and physical-task automation distinguish what the technology can do, how care work changes, and the effects on care. Hypothetical variations distinguish failures of interpretation, follow-through, and supporting conditions and identify grounds for favourable judgements.

CONCLUSION

Improvement over current practice does not establish adequate person-centred fundamental care. Replacing an activity does not establish replacement of the care relationship. The questions require participatory refinement and empirical testing.

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE PROFESSION AND/OR PATIENT CARE: Nurses and leaders can use the questions to identify changes in care and work and deficits that remain, including when an imperfect deployment offers a justified improvement over feasible alternatives.

IMPACT: The questions address inadequate care as an evaluation benchmark and offer patients, nurses, and decision-makers a way to evaluate technology deployment and service redesign.

REPORTING METHOD: Discursive theoretical analysis; no applicable reporting checklist.

PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: This study did not include patient or public involvement in its design, conduct, or reporting.