Here’s your daily affirmation: Your Complex Rehab Technology (CRT) work is not easily replicated. That’s according to a new report that said the skills you use every day are among those “most likely to protect jobs from being replaced by AI [artificial intelligence].”
The April study from Click Finder, a digital marketing agency based in the United Kingdom, said careers requiring crisis intervention skills, such as those used by first responders, were the safest from AI, “averaging just 10% automation risk.”
After crisis intervention, the skills noted as the most difficult for AI to replicate were complex case diagnosis (16.6% automation risk) and patient physical assessment (17% automation risk), which require “real-time judgment that AI cannot safely perform.” Those skills were closely followed by client/patient relationship cultivation (18% automation risk).
Let’s break down how those skills are used daily in CRT.
Complex case diagnosis and patient assessment are “not about matching symptoms to a database,” the study said. “It is about reasoning with incomplete and often contradictory information. Machines can list possibilities, but they cannot weigh the ambiguity of a patient who says they feel fine, but looks unwell. Physical assessment is not just about taking vital signs. It is about integrating what you feel, see and hear in real time. These skills are impossible to automate because they require human presence.”
Applied to CRT, those skills translate like this: Each CRT user is unique, with a one-of-a-kind presentation, level of function, potential progression, daily goals and environments. If you’ve ever asked ChatGPT to help you problem solve, you probably noticed how it often “cheats” by ignoring challenging, real-world parameters. For example, when I ask for a dinner recipe “using just these ingredients I have on hand,” ChatGPT suddenly assumes my pantry is equivalent to a fully stocked Whole Foods.
But seating and wheeled mobility clinicians and providers cannot alter their clients’ diagnoses and presentations for their own convenience. Narrow doorways in client homes can’t be quickly and magically widened, and progression due to either the mobility condition or aging can’t be slowed down by arguing with time.
And funding rules require working within the confines of HCPCS codes, allowables, prior authorizations and policies such as reasonable, useful lifetimes and same/similar rules.
All of which is exactly the sort of “reasoning with incomplete and often contradictory information” described in the study.
As for client/patient relationship cultivation, the study said AI “cannot replicate human empathy or sustain personal bonds over years of interaction.”
Every day, providers and clinicians have complicated conversations with clients and caregivers. Maybe it’s discussing the need for a power wheelchair and seating system to anticipate the progression of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Or explaining the impact of on-time mobility to parents still processing the fact that their infant will never functionally ambulate. Somewhere right now, a seating team is talking over options with a longtime ultralightweight self-propeller whose shoulders have given out.
To be effective, those conversations simultaneously require emotional intelligence and critical thinking skills. And clinicians and providers who have long histories with these clients — which is absolutely the goal — have to remain professional while dealing with their own emotions as well. Many CRT professionals have told me how their hearts sink upon seeing how far a client’s condition has progressed.
So while this study doesn’t make your work any easier, I hope you go through today knowing that the skills you use every hour are critically important, recognized and irreplaceable.
Take that, robot overlords.
