Deep Dive: AI, sleep, medical errors, Zionism, peace, and Passover
My opinion pages regarding recent news. I keep this section separate from the Blog which is focused on inspiration. The likelihood of me being wrong in these pages is greater than the Blog area.
Nurses protest AI in healthcare
Nurses at Kaiser Permanente gathered to protest implementation of AI reported Becker’s Heath IT. The protest was sponsored by the California Nurses Association. The nurses complaint - or at least the report of the protest - seems void of exactly what it is about KP’s implementation threatens safe nursing practice. It’s unclear if the rally is a blanket statement against AI by nurses, a protest against poor use of AI by Kaiser Permanente, or a poorly researched/written article by Becker’s Health IT. AI is here for us. This writer is dubious about the foundations of AI and its ethical implications for healthcare specifically and society generally. If specific guardrails were in place, AI might offer significant benefits to health management. However, the algorithms for healthcare AI aren’t readily and publicly visible. That is, the specific algorithms and models are proprietary and not transparent. The if this then that algorithm has to be open to examination to evaluate - at any point in time - the validity of the rule. We will learn too late that the Silicon Valley motto of move fast and break things does not work in healthcare. In the meantime, we need to understand what, specifically, is happening in the machine. Regulators, especially, need access to the programmed rules. We can’t tolerate a healthcare Love Canal where we only discover the harm done many years later with no one held accountable.
On sleep
Having trouble sleeping? - I support and subscribe to the free Psyche website because of thoughtful articles like What to do when racing thoughts keep you up at night. So, what do you do? Me? I’m doing more meditation these days. That seems to help. But I still have those nights more frequently than I like. I don’t do as much catastrophizing as I did. But it still happens on occasion. This article gives some strategies to help. Most of them involve rethinking our relationship with sleep (and life) in practical ways. One big question we should be pressing ourselves on is Why it matters? Anyway, if sleep is troubling you, I hope you’ll check the link out.
Prosecuting medical errors
Kentucky decriminalizes medical errors - According to Becker’s Hospital Review, Kentucky has decriminalized medical errors, including those of nurses. You may remember the case of Tennessee nurse RaDonda Vaught whose actions ended in the death of her patient. There are exceptions, of course, for negligence and intentional harm. The case was an educational, legal, and ethical nightmare. If health care providers live in fear of reporting errors we can expect more frequent and more serious errors to occur.
The actions of Vanderbilt - which arguably helped precipitate the event due to systemic and system errors - and the District Attorney’s Office - who failed to mete reasonable justice - gave rise to outrage and fear on the part of all health providers, especially nurses. The notion that we make things better by making an example is flawed. Kentucky rightfully said, No, we need to protect our health care providers while still protecting patients through legal protections already on the books.
On Zionism and Passover
I hope you’ll read this opinion piece by Naomi Klein in The Guardian. What does Passover mean? What does Seder mean? What, in fact, does Judaism mean in the modern era? To what should the Jewish state aspire? To what extent should Judaism be allowed to protect itself? Is it okay to destroy all the sources of Palestinian scholarship, society, and indeed those who have no possibility of bringing harm to Israel, little children? Klein makes the case that Zionism - in becoming nationalized and institutionalized - has lost It’s soul, the very thing that defined Judaism: faith, respect toward the stranger, and goodness.
I’m not up on the latest news about Israel and Palestine. I am frankly horrified by what has become of the State of modern Christianity and the State of modern Judaism. In the assumption of power, they have both lost their moral and faith values. I use the word State intentionally. They have both aligned themselves with power (and even violence) however and whenever they can, moral or not. With respect to the Christian tradition, I have to constantly remind myself that the Christian State isn’t Christian. As Klein suggests about Zionism being an idol, the same is true of the Christian State. It’s time we call out these idols for what they are.