ChatGPT’s potential use in healthcare is not limited to diagnostic assistance. A working ER doctor has shared how he has used ChatGPT to treat patients in safe and small ways. While many have touted the use of AI as a future diagnostic tool in healthcare, the immediate benefits of using ChatGPT have been overlooked. ChatGPT is used as a resource for understanding complex medical diagnoses in a language that patients can easily understand in emergency rooms with limited time for each patient.
When one elderly patient was suffering from fluid in her lungs, her concerned children repeatedly demanded that an IV should be given to her for dehydration. However, the doctor knew that administering IV fluids would make her condition worse or even lead to her death. In order to explain the situation empathically to the patient’s children, the doctor typed out a request for ChatGPT-4 on his computer. ChatGPT produced a response that explained the situation to the patient’s children in simple but compassionate terms, which greatly calmed them.
ChatGPT can be viewed as a brilliant intern, albeit occasionally hungover, that physicians could use to prevent overwhelming patients with medical jargon. Its use could save physicians and their staff an average of five minutes per patient, and users could save well over 10 million hours of time per year, which can then be devoted to more hands-on care for more patients.
While there are still some practical challenges with using ChatGPT in healthcare, such as the need to ensure HIPAA compliance and avoid catastrophic advice, the benefits of scaling the use of ChatGPT in emergency rooms across the US would be significant. Users would be able to devote more time to the human side of healthcare, which artificial intelligence can’t replace.
The use of ChatGPT in healthcare will not replace physicians’ jobs, but will augment them. In fact, doctors have learned better ways to explain medical diagnoses to patients from ChatGPT. By using ChatGPT to help interpret complex medical terms, doctors and their staff can focus on providing more empathic care, saving valuable time in the process.
In conclusion, there are many small but immediately achievable applications of AI in healthcare that physicians should focus on, such as the use of ChatGPT to eliminate doctor speak and make medical diagnoses more understandable to patients. Physicians must focus on providing more empathic care to patients while augmenting it with technology like ChatGPT, which can save time and energy that could be devoted to more patients.
