Student perceptions of artificial intelligence in Doctor of Physical Therapy Education

Health profession education is impacted by developments in artificial intelligence (AI). While AI provides useful supplemental material, it is unknown how it will affect learning complex clinical topics. Artificial intelligence has the potential to be a powerful tool when used in tandem with traditional human studying methods. This study aims to understand Doctor of Physical Therapy students' perceptions of AI as a study tool.

Students participated in an online pre/post survey evaluating their perceptions of AI's ability to diagnose and treat clinical cases, and two corresponding research activities where students were asked to complete a neurologic case study using classroom notes and a separate case using AI. Descriptive statistics, Wilcoxon signed-rank tests, and effect sizes were calculated.

Twenty-three first year Doctor of Physical Therapy students volunteered to participate. In the post-survey, students' perceptions of AI included increased trust to provide a clinical diagnosis (p = .001; r = 0.66) and a treatment plan (p = .005; r = 0.58), and to consider patient-centered plans of care (p = .036; r = 0.44). There was no significant difference following the research activities about concern handling sensitive information (p = .499), replacing a human clinician (p = .255), or the need for human oversight (p = .833).

The use of AI as a study tool is rapidly developing. This study showed that students' perceptions of AI were significantly more positive after an exposure of clinical course application. These results are beneficial to educators to ensure that students are shown the practical applications of AI throughout learning strategies.