Resident Physicians’ Perceptions of Artificial Intelligence and Implications for Medical Education: A Qualitative Study

TL;DR

This study explores how resident physicians view artificial intelligence in healthcare and what medical education should include to prepare future doctors.

Contribution

The study identifies five key themes from resident physicians' perceptions of AI and suggests how medical education should address AI's ethical and humanistic challenges.

Findings

Residents believe AI will transform healthcare but worry about losing control over its implementation.

Residents emphasize the importance of humanistic roles in medicine that cannot be replaced by AI.

Medical education should include AI fundamentals and opportunities for residents to engage in AI development.

Abstract

Educators have called for training in artificial intelligence (AI) in medical education given its certain impact on the future of healthcare. However, there is no consensus regarding how to introduce AI into medical education and little is known about how AI is viewed among medical trainees. In an effort to inform the development of medical education curricula on AI, this study explores perceptions of resident physicians regarding AI in healthcare and its possible impact on their future practice.

The authors conducted focus groups with resident physicians across multiple specialties in 2018–2019. Residents were invited to voluntarily participate during pre-existing conference times. Interview transcripts were coded iteratively, and coded data was clustered into categories and themes to capture resident perceptions on AI.

Fifty-six residents from emergency medicine, internal medicine, pathology, pediatrics, and radiology participated in six separate focus groups. Conversations generated the following five overarching themes: healthcare is transforming, AI has a role at the clinical and systems level, concern for lack of agency in the development and implementation of AI, AI presents potential harms and uncertainties, and enduring roles of the physician: humanism, judgment, and responsibility.

Residents described humanistic roles that should not be replaced by technology and voiced concerns that physicians lack agency to influence how AI will be used in healthcare. Medical education should explore humanistic and ethical challenges related to AI, provide a foundational understanding of AI technology, and offer opportunities for participation in the development of AI technology when possible.

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