With the growing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into the healthcare field, it becomes less of a matter of if it will become part of the daily practice in medicine, and more of a matter of when. The same applies to medical education. While AI remains in its infancy, there are already many ways that students can use it to enhance their learning, making it more efficient and personalized.
Extra Practice Questions
While medical students traditionally relied on question banks to prepare for their school and board exams, AI now offers a free and efficient way to generate extra questions that can be tailored to their educational needs. For example, OpenEvidence has already released a beta version of USMLE prep tools that creates questions modeled after Step 1, Step 2, and Step 3 exams. While these AI-generated questions and explanations may not always be fully accurate or perfectly aligned with board-related content, they can serve as helpful supplements when you need extra practice or a new way to test your understanding of the material.
Simplify Difficult Topics
Another great way that I have used AI is explaining complex topics in simpler terms. Throughout a large portion of my preclinical years, I used prompts like “Explain this concept as if I am in college” in ChatGPT. This approach helps break down difficult material into manageable explanations, allowing you to build your understanding from the ground up before diving deep into more detailed resources and explanations. It is a quick and effective way to clarify confusing topics and reinforce your foundational knowledge, which is especially relevant as we will soon need to explain these same concepts to our future patients in ways that they will be able to understand.
Clarifying Clinical Questions and Guidelines
AI software can also be a valuable tool in the clinical setting, where time is often limited and quick access to evidence-based information is essential. This comes in handy during rotations, where AI software like OpenEvidence can help summarize management guidelines, diagnostic criteria, and treatment options, backing up their information with reputable sources like primary literature or established clinical guidelines. However, it is important to remember that AI tools in and of themselves have limitations, as they often adhere to strict guideline-based recommendations and may not account for patient-specific nuances, such as social determinants of health. Because of this, AI should be used to supplement, not replace, your own critical thinking and clinical reasoning.
Prepare for Patient Encounters
A more underrated use of AI is its use in building differential-focused questions before seeing patients. This can be particularly helpful when seeing patients with vague chief complaints. For example, if a patient presents with abdominal pain, instead of heavily relying on the OPQRST mnemonic, AI could offer additional, targeted questions that help narrow down potential diagnoses. An example prompt would be “What pertinent questions to ask patients if they have right upper abdominal pain?” This approach not only improves your own history taking skills, but also enhances your diagnostic reasoning.
