Can ChatGPT Help General Practitioners Become Acquainted with Conversations About Dying? A Simulated Single-Case...

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare
• Communication Skills Training

Background:

• General practitioners (GPs) require training to initiate open conversations about death with patients.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) may offer novel training methods to improve physician attitudes towards discussing end-of-life care.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the capability of OpenAI's ChatGPT-4o in simulating a medical communication scenario.
• To assess ChatGPT-4o's effectiveness in role-playing a general practitioner (GP) consulting a patient nearing the end of life at home.

Main Methods:

• ChatGPT-4o was prompted to generate a simulated medical communication scenario.
• The AI was instructed to follow a seven-step evidence-based model for discussing dying.
• The AI-generated conversation was evaluated against the recommendations of the established model.

Main Results:

• ChatGPT-4o successfully generated a seven-step scenario aligning with most recommendations.
• The AI did not explicitly use terms related to "dying" or "death," despite the context.
• Cultural and religious aspects of dying and death were not incorporated into the simulation.

Conclusions:

• ChatGPT-4o can serve as a valuable supportive tool for training GPs in end-of-life communication.
• The AI facilitates learning sensitive conversation sequencing without burdening real patients or requiring advanced resources.
• AI simulations offer a practical method for enhancing GPs' skills in discussing dying.