Effective communication is critical to providing high-quality healthcare.
It helps build strong patient-provider relationships and ensures that the right treatment plan is developed, implemented, and monitored.
However, in today’s fast-paced medical environment, where time constraints and technical jargon often dominate conversations, communicating clinical information effectively can be challenging.
The use of technology in the workplace has revolutionized the way we work. Letter templates and voice recognition systems are designed to streamline administrative tasks, increasing efficiency and saving valuable time for employees who can focus on more critical tasks. While these technologies should not replace human skills, they can enhance productivity levels while ensuring accuracy and consistency in communication across all channels.
In a recent commentary published in The Lancet Digital Health, experts discuss why effective communication matters and how healthcare providers can improve their communication skills to meet patient needs more effectively by using ChatGPT – an AI-powered tool that can assist clinicians in generating comprehensive patient notes while saving valuable time.
The study evaluated the readability, factual correctness, and humanness of ChatGPT-generated clinical letters to patients with limited clinical input, using skin cancer as an example.
ChatGPT is an OpenAI chatbot that uses natural language processing (NLP) technology to generate human-like text.
The study found that the ChatGPT-generated letters were readable by patients with a reading age of 11-12 years, and were accurate and humane in their writing style.
The study authors created 38 hypothetical clinical scenarios related to skin cancer, ranging from simply following specific directions to using national guidelines to provide clinical advice in the letter. After submitting the instructions, ChatGPT generated a response in the form of a clinical letter to be issued to the patient. The readability of letters was evaluated using the online tool readable, while the factual correctness and humanness of letters were assessed by two independent clinicians using a Likert scale ranging from 0 to 10.
Overall, the study found that the mean readability age for the generated letters was at a US ninth grade level, and the letters were considered to have an average difficulty. The median correctness of the clinical information contained in the letter was 7 out of 10, while the median humanness of the writing style was also 7 out of 10.
The study concluded that AI has the potential to produce high-quality clinical letters that are comprehensible by patients, while improving efficiency, consistency, accuracy, patient satisfaction, and delivering cost savings to the healthcare system.
The appropriate recording and communication of clinical information between clinicians and patients are of paramount importance, and there has been a much-needed drive to improve the information that is shared with patients. However, the preparation of clinical letters can be time-consuming, and novel technologies such as NLP and AI have the power to revolutionize this area of practice.
In conclusion, incorporating technology and NLP algorithms into daily operations can significantly improve workflow efficiency while allowing staff members to focus on delivering value-added services that require human expertise. Effective communication is essential to ensuring positive outcomes in cancer care and various other healthcare areas. By utilizing innovative tools and strategies, patient outcomes can be improved and the doctors and nurses can provide better overall care.
