{"id":14566,"date":"2025-08-21T19:42:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T19:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/14566\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T19:42:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T19:42:07","slug":"how-ai-can-ease-doctor-burnout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/14566\/","title":{"rendered":"How AI Can Ease Doctor Burnout"},"content":{"rendered":"

Modern doctors aren\u2019t just caregivers; they\u2019re also clerks. They spend much of their day seeing patients and much of what remains drafting and inputting clinical notes of those visits. That takes a toll. More than 45% of physicians suffer from burnout, according to<\/a> the American Medical Association\u2014and the clerical demands of their work, which often spill into their evenings, are a documented<\/a> part of the cause.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But now there may be a solution: According to a new study<\/a> published in JAMA Network Open, artificial intelligence systems known as ambient documentation technology, which record patient visits and draft notes for the doctors, can reduce burnout rates by nearly 31%.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis incredible reduction in burnout [is] really bringing joy back to medicine,\u201d says Dr. Rebecca Mishuris, a primary care physician, chief medical information officer at Mass General Brigham, and co-senior author of the study. \u201cI want to make sure that everyone is given a fair chance to experience that benefit and work with individuals and support them to use the technology to its fullest extent.\u201d<\/p>\n

To conduct their work, the researchers recruited 873 physicians at Mass General Brigham and 557 at Emory Healthcare in Atlanta. These doctors encompassed a range of specialties, including surgery, urgent or emergency care care, pediatrics, infectious disease, and more. Their experience ranged from just one year in practice to more than 20. The doctors took surveys measuring burnout and well-being at various points over nearly three months. <\/p>\n

Read More<\/strong>: ChatGPT May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills, According to a New MIT Study<\/a><\/p>\n

Most of the doctors failed to follow-up for the length of the study; by the end, the response rate was just 22% for the Mass General Brigham doctors and 11% for the ones at Emory. But the results were encouraging for the minority of physicians who did share their thoughts. Among the Mass General Brigham doctors, the AI assistant\u2014documenting patient visits in the background\u2014was associated with a 21% reduction in burnout, while at Emory it led to a 30% increase in well-being.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that response rates are always difficult, particularly when you’re talking about busy clinicians,\u201d Mishuris says. \u201cFor us, part of the response was that people continue to use the system today, and it has spread like wildfire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of the doctors were enthusiastic about ambient documentation. \u201cIt definitely improves my joy in practice because I get to interact with patients and look them in the eye without worrying I will forget what they\u2019re saying later,\u201d wrote one infectious disease specialist in a survey response. \u201cAs the tools grow, I think they will fundamentally change the experience of being a physician.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cExceptionally helpful,\u201d wrote a neurologist. \u201cDefinitely improves my contact with patients and families and definitely makes clinic easier.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there were naysayers, too. \u201cI tried it but found it added 1 to 2 hours a day to my note writing,\u201d wrote one pulmonologist. \u201cI\u2019m not ready to hand my documentation over to AI yet,\u201d concluded a primary care and internal medicine specialist.<\/p>\n

Read More<\/strong>: A Psychiatrist Posed As a Teen With Therapy Chatbots. The Conversations Were Alarming<\/a><\/p>\n

Mishuris is mindful of these criticisms. \u201cClearly this is not going to be a technology that is beneficial to everyone,\u201d she says. \u201cEvery clinician has a slightly different workflow and a slightly different approach to their documentation. Some people are willing to hand things over to AI\u2014to give up that sense of complete control, knowing that they do have complete control over the final product, but not over the draft.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

More research remains to be done. In their paper, the authors acknowledge that the relatively low response rate might indicate that only the most enthusiastic users were following up, skewing the responses toward the positive, while the users who did not find any benefit from the technology remained silent. And not every medical field lends itself to an AI assistant. One pediatrician pointed out that most of the patient visits in that specialty involve physical exams, which can\u2019t be captured by AI. A hospice and palliative care doctor complained that the system didn\u2019t work well when it came to psychosocial and spiritual health issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It has now been a year since the first results came in, and Mishuris and her colleagues are working on a followup study building on the initial work.<\/p>\n

The authors believe that artificial intelligence can fill a gaping need in the world of medicine. “The fact that people are using the system…[suggests] that those results are likely to hold across a much broader population,” says Mishuris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Modern doctors aren\u2019t just caregivers; they\u2019re also clerks. They spend much of their day seeing patients and much…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[275],"tags":[18,135,475,474,19,3536,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-14566","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-health-care","11":"tag-healthcare","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-innovation","14":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}