About The Event
Loneliness, mental health, virtual caring, and transcultural robotic nursing
Abstract:
My presentation will focus on the loneliness caused by mental
health challenges, and the mental health challenges which
are caused by loneliness. I will propose that technological
solutions such as artificially intelligent devices and socially
assistive humanoid robots may help to alleviate loneliness and
improve our mental health and well-being.
I will briefly discuss the results of my latest collaborative
research project called CARESSES which produced the first
ever culturally competent, artificially intelligent, autonomous
robot. The COVID-19 pandemic posed huge problems for the
health and social care services, the providers of care services,
the patients and their families. The time for mental health
professionals to engage with technology can no longer be
postponed. Let’s start the conversation.
Biography
Dr Irena Papadopoulos, PhD, MA(Ed), BA, RN, RM, NDN,
DipN, DipNE
Irena Papadopoulos is the Professor of Transcultural Health
and Nursing, and the Founder and Head of the Research
Centre for Transcultural Studies in Health at Middlesex
University, London.
She has been researching issues related to transcultural health
and cultural competence for over 25 years. She is the originator
of the work that led to the development of the Papadopoulos,
Tilki and Taylor (1998) model of transcultural nursing and
cultural competence.
Since 2010 she has been researching compassion. She has
coined the concept ‘culturally competent compassion’, as well
as ‘culturally competent and compassionate[CCC] leadership’.
In 2018 she published her book ‘Culturally Competent
Compassion : A guide for healthcare students and
practitioners’ which includes chapters on CCC leadership,
CCC learning and practising, researching CC compassion,
measuring CC compassion, etc.
She is the founder of the IENE programme (Intercultural
Education of Nurses in Europe, 2008 onwards), the originator
and co-ordinator of its first six projects and the originator of
the 7th and 8th projects and co-originator of the 9th project.
All projects have been funded by the European Commission.
During 2017 -2020 she worked on the project CARESSES
(funded by HORIZON2020 and the Japanese Ministry of
Internal Affairs and Communication) and developed the
first ever guidelines for the production of the first culturally
competent AI socially assistive robot for health and social care.
She has coined the terms Transcultural Nursing Robotics
and Transcultural Health and Social Care Robotics, which
she hopes that they will, in the future, develop into unique
disciplines.
