Empowering residents and early-career clinicians with AI

Generative AI has the potential to transform healthcare by reducing administrative burden and improving workflow efficiency. From creating faster documentation to supporting clinical decision-making within evidence-based frameworks, the possibilities are expansive. With this increased use of AI in healthcare, careful oversight is important to ensure medical students and residents preserve core clinical reasoning and critical thinking skills so they can deliver exceptional care throughout their career, especially when it comes to utilizing generative AI to support clinical decision-making. In a roundtable hosted by the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) and sponsored by Elsevier, participants shared insights, use cases and strategies for the responsible use of generative AI to assist residents and early-career clinicians in decision-making. Participants — consisting of program directors and associate program directors for internal medicine and pediatric hospital medicine residency programs — generally agreed that while caution must be used when adopting AI technology, there are many opportunities to advance medical education and clinical practice with thoughtful approaches to implementation. This roundtable generated key insights that can be helpful to other residency leaders integrating AI into their programs.