Rachael Bedard. NY Times 9/25/26: Being a Doctor Will Never Be the Same After A.I.
An excerpt:
“I have a confession: A.I. is making me a better doctor. And I worry that it’s making doctors-in-training worse…
I already use the technology in my practice all the time…This summer, I used an A.I. tool — a platform called OpenEvidence, accessible only to health care providers — to help me choose antibiotics for one patient and to interpret unusual bloodwork for another. A.I. reminded me to consider migraines when a woman presented with dizziness. ..
Almost every month, I’m confronted with a complaint or syndrome that I don’t recognize. I’m confident in my mastery over what doctors do — history-taking, reasoning, communicating. I’m less confident about my continued mastery of an ever-evolving universe of facts. Now, the chatbot in my pocket reassures me that I will always know enough, or have access to the cloud-based intelligence that generally does.
All of my students and residents also use OpenEvidence, however, and I worry about the consequences of introducing such a powerful decision aid so early in their careers. Not only have they memorized less than I’d like, but they can seem almost passive in their relationship to their machines…
OpenEvidence is trained exclusively on peer-reviewed evidence and guidelines, and includes citations for all its claims…To use the app well, you must stay skeptical as you scroll…
I’m surprised by how much I learn from, and enjoy, these interactions. More important, my patient care has improved as conversations with the agent push my thinking beyond its usual limits…
Adam Rodman, a physician and A.I. researcher at Harvard Medical School,… said he shared my concern that trainees aren’t benefiting from “productive struggles” as much as their predecessors. “In experienced hands, decision support might cause a little de-skilling, but a little de-skilling probably doesn’t matter much to you,” Dr. Rodman told me. “But if you do that to somebody who has much less skill, the cognitive offloading can cause never-skilling”…
Current doctors-to-be may be the most adversely affected generation when it comes to A.I. They’re training before we know enough about how to teach them well in this new paradigm.
My take: In all aspects of learning, not just medicine, using AI shortcuts may make learners increasingly dependent on their devices, undermine their judgment and hinder developing their own voice. How to best train individuals in this new era remains unclear.
Related blog posts:
- The Future of Medicine: AI’s Role vs Human Judgment
- Artificial Intelligence in the Endoscopy Suite
- AI for GI
- Health Advice From AI Chatbots Frequently Wrong
