The slippery slope for patients, nurses, and doctors posed by robots in healthcare. For patients needing dialysis or care for acute kidney failure, there’s a new doctor in the nephrology ward at St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka, Calif. Meet the doc on a stick. It’s not a scene from “Star Trek†or the latest X-box video game. And, like the smooth-sounding, but ominous “Hal†computer running the spaceship in “2001: A Space Odyssey,†those side effects might be a killer.