Designing Care Robots for Sustainable Healthcare Work

Compassionate care is widely acknowledged as a fundamental component of high-quality healthcare, closely linked to positive outcomes for both patients and their families. The increasing incidence of burnout and compassion fatigue among healthcare professionals represents a critical obstacle to maintaining this standard of care. Elevated stress levels, emotional exhaustion, and compassion fatigue can significantly impair professionals’ capacity to offer empathetic and patient-focused support. This paper explores whether integrating care and assistive robots into healthcare environment can mitigate these challenges. By automating routine tasks and providing support, robots may contribute to creating a more sustainable work environment, thereby reducing stress, and burnout. To achieve this, we propose adopting a Value-Sensitive Design (VSD) approach which ensures that robots are not only technologically advanced but also ethically designed. VSD incorporates moral and social values throughout the design process, emphasizing that care robots must align with persons’ needs and values. This approach highlights the importance of a value-based framework in shaping innovative robotic solutions.