# Healthcare Students' Ethical Considerations of Care Robots in The Netherlands
## 4 Discussion  
The current study examined how moral considerations and perceptions of utility and acceptance of different types of care robots were appraised by trainee healthcare and nursing professionals at intermediate and higher educational levels. We also analysed the relative contributions of perceived utility and ethics in robot acceptance. Results showed that trainee care professionals evaluated assistive robots as more maleficent than either monitoring or companion robots. Companion robots were also more likely to be accepted to collaborate with than monitoring and assistive robots. Furthermore, monitoring robots were considered more maleficent than companion robots. Participants also thought that monitoring robots are less useful than companion or assisting robots. Considerations of autonomy did not differentiate between the robot types. No significant differences between the intermediate and higher educational levels were found. Finally, results show that moral concerns weigh more heavily in accepting to work with a robot than practical utility, although both contribute significantly to and explain a substantial amount of variance in accepting robots on the work floor. Healthcare and nursing students were presented three types of care robots to examine their moral considerations, acceptance and utility perceptions. Results show that these trainee healthcare professionals saw little harm in companion robots and worried most for assistive robots, irrespective of their schooling. From the debriefing interviews, it appeared that assistive robots were perceived as most malefect because they can actually physically drop someone or make a wrong move. Importantly, our results provide a more positive view on attitudes toward healthcare robots than previous studies showed. Only several years ago, healthcare students feared that robots would replace them and considered employing robots in care unacceptable and not very useful [26; 27; 28; 29]. Today, trainee healthcare and nursing professionals are willing to accept care robots on the work floor provided that the technology does not harm the patient and that patient safety is guaranteed. Acceptance levels vary according to the type of robot with companion robots being the most acceptable and useful. It is argued in the extant literature that companion robots that, for instance, are able to play the favourite music of an elderly patient who is suffering from dementia, could alleviate loneliness and increase feelings of well-being [36; 37; 38]. Hence, a robot might provide a perfect interface for accessing such a resource, providing music as treatment with a greater degree of interactivity simulating personal interaction with a human being. Results further showed that morality was more important than utility in accepting a robot in care although utility was not trivial. This is an important addition to prevailing theories on technology acceptance [25], which primarily focus on utility and ease of use but neglect the possible moral or ethical considerations. The participants' position in our study is in line with [PERSON] and [PERSON] [24] (p. 131) who opposed the trend that utility considerations often overthrow a \"moral sense of care.\" In our study, morality and utility together explained a substantial amount of variance in the willingness to accept healthcare robots. Notably, when considering the relative weights in a hierarchical regression analysis, the largest part is explained by moral considerations such as robots doing harm or increasing a patient's independence. Thus, indeed, moral senses of care overthrow utility considerations in (trainee) care professionals. Our findings suggest that care robots have the potential to solve urgent problems in care [10], provided that, before implementation, the moral concerns of healthcare and nursing professionals are taken into account. Our results indicate that each type of robot should follow its own line of introduction because their different functionalities come with different moral concerns.