‘Era of AI is here,’ but not yet reducing physician burnout
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Rapidly advancing technology in artificial intelligence and other spaces has yet to deliver on “the promise” of minimizing physician workload and burnout, according to a speaker at the Ending Clinician Burnout Global Community summit.
“We are in an unprecedented era in technology and health care,” Tina Shah, MD, MPH, a practicing pulmonary and critical care physician based in New York City, told attendees. “The era of AI is here.”
However, she cautioned that although current technologies are sophisticated enough to minimize work and cognitive load for health care providers, it has yet to achieve those goals.
“The promise is that technology can help minimize the extraneous load, but it hasn’t,” Shah said. “Technology is increasing rather than decreasing that extraneous load.”
She argued that minimizing administrative burden with advances like AI is critical to minimizing burnout among health care providers.
“We need to set the standard that we should not introduce another technology to a doctor’s life that does not make their life easier and smoother,” Shah said. “We are an extremely at-risk population because we are burning out.”
Although most physicians may not have the know-how or bandwidth to improve the technology being deployed in their practices, they do play a role in making the technology more efficient and user-friendly, according to Shah.
“We need to be able to articulate what our needs are because there are people who want to help us,” she said.
One important hurdle to implementing new technology in health care spaces is the overall suspicion of new technology, said Shah. However, she noted that a certain degree of suspicion is understandable.
As an example, she offered the myriad “unintended consequences” of electronic health records, which were supposed to save time and help providers communicate with each other.
“Now, it takes me double the amount of time to prescribe Tylenol than when I had a pen and prescription pad,” Shah said.
She added that HIPAA laws and safety regulations have made EHRs “more complicated and cumbersome and time-consuming.”
Mandatory, time-consuming training for a new device or protocol can also result in suspicion of technology within a practice, according to Shah.
“I do not have time to do this training that is supposed to help make life my life easier as a doctor,” she said. “There is a lot of murkiness with the perception among doctors of what technology’s role in health care is.”
It is because of this murkiness — and the mistrust that often accompanies it — that clinicians and patients at the center of it should have the “loudest voice” regarding the best use of technology in clinical care.
“We all just want to be able to easily do our job and help human beings,” Shah said.
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Shah T. Presented at: Ending Clinician Burnout Global Community; Aug. 14, 2024; (virtual meeting).
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