The Functional Requirements of Person‐Centred Fundamental Care: Evaluating Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Against a Depleted Baseline

AIM: To propose provisional, theory-informed questions for evaluating whether artificial intelligence and robotic deployments support person-centred fundamental care when current practice is depleted. DESIGN: Discursive theoretical paper. METHODS: Purposive conceptual synthesis of fundamental care scholarship, selected behavioural and developmental theories, vulnerability scholarship, and illustrative technology evidence. RESULTS: Three lenses generate provisional questions about patient-specific meaning, connections among care activities over time, and the conditions sustaining responsive care. A separate ethical argument holds that delegating activities does not discharge professional or institutional obligations to patients. Applications to adaptive monitoring, social interaction, generative dialogue, and physical-task automation distinguish what the technology can do, how care work changes, and the effects on care. Hypothetical variations distinguish failures of interpretation, follow-through, and supporting conditions and identify grounds for favourable judgements. CONCLUSION: Improvement over current practice does not establish adequate person-centred fundamental care. Replacing an activity does not establish replacement of the care relationship. The questions require participatory refinement and empirical testing. IMPLICATIONS FOR THE PROFESSION AND/OR PATIENT CARE: Nurses and leaders can use the questions to identify changes in care and work and deficits that remain, including when an imperfect deployment offers a justified improvement over feasible alternatives. IMPACT: The questions address inadequate care as an evaluation benchmark and offer patients, nurses, and decision-makers a way to evaluate technology deployment and service redesign. REPORTING METHOD: Discursive theoretical analysis; no applicable reporting checklist. PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: This study did not include patient or public involvement in its design, conduct, or reporting.