Doctors spend months or years being supervised. If a doctor cheated on one test then maybe it would slip through, but I see this as no different to just forgetting some part of some learning from years ago, which surely happens.
If a doctor cheated on every exam, their supervisor is going to notice really quickly.
I think we might overestimate how qualified a junior doctor is after doing all the exams. This article (from 2009, well before LLMs) says junior doctors screw up in 8% of prescriptions they write, with half of the mistakes “potentially significant”. This is after any chance at having a supervising doctor review. It says pharmacists generally save the day by spotting the errors.
I also found local numbers showing about 16% of junior doctors never make it through training (the article is saying it’s actually 40%, but 16% is their “normal”). That will include burnout and other reasons for not continuing, but I’m pretty sure with such a decent proportion of people dropping out you can expect the ones that haven’t taken in enough understanding despite passing their exams are commonly dropping out as part of that group, and though LLMs may have increased the pool I doubt we can assume these people make it through training without learning what they need to know. Becoming a doctor is just so intense that it doesn’t seem likely.
As has been pointed out by someone else, our concern should probably lie in those that pass exams then go on to do medical (or other) roles without any supervision period.
Part of my concern is that APPs like nurse practitioners that have no supervised practice as part of their training are going to become even more poorly educated. Their curriculum is already algorithm-based, and because of the Nursing lobby pushing for more and more independence for NP’s, they have dwindling physician oversight requirements (in some places a physician only needs to audit 10% of their notes and never actually lay eyes on the patient themselves.)
As a patient, you do have the right to refuse to be treated by anyone. You may have to wait for a physician to be available, but no one can treat you without your consent and you can always ask for a provider’s title and licensure.
I don’t think I’ve ever been to a Nurse Practitioner without knowing exactly what the outcome would be, and realistically that does take a lot of burden off doctors so long as they correctly recognise what they should and shouldn’t do.
I expect that rules will catch up with the existence of LLMs, the problem is for those few generations that have to live through the transition period…
Doctors spend months or years being supervised. If a doctor cheated on one test then maybe it would slip through, but I see this as no different to just forgetting some part of some learning from years ago, which surely happens.
If a doctor cheated on every exam, their supervisor is going to notice really quickly.
But once they get to be supervised, it’s “too late to fail them” (/cynic)
I think we might overestimate how qualified a junior doctor is after doing all the exams. This article (from 2009, well before LLMs) says junior doctors screw up in 8% of prescriptions they write, with half of the mistakes “potentially significant”. This is after any chance at having a supervising doctor review. It says pharmacists generally save the day by spotting the errors.
I also found local numbers showing about 16% of junior doctors never make it through training (the article is saying it’s actually 40%, but 16% is their “normal”). That will include burnout and other reasons for not continuing, but I’m pretty sure with such a decent proportion of people dropping out you can expect the ones that haven’t taken in enough understanding despite passing their exams are commonly dropping out as part of that group, and though LLMs may have increased the pool I doubt we can assume these people make it through training without learning what they need to know. Becoming a doctor is just so intense that it doesn’t seem likely.
As has been pointed out by someone else, our concern should probably lie in those that pass exams then go on to do medical (or other) roles without any supervision period.
Part of my concern is that APPs like nurse practitioners that have no supervised practice as part of their training are going to become even more poorly educated. Their curriculum is already algorithm-based, and because of the Nursing lobby pushing for more and more independence for NP’s, they have dwindling physician oversight requirements (in some places a physician only needs to audit 10% of their notes and never actually lay eyes on the patient themselves.)
These Nurse Practitioners are presumably already required to be highly skilled nurses? Please tell me that’s true 😑
Nope. They can (and these days often do) go straight from their nursing degree to an NP program with no real work experience.
Oh great. Just what I wanted to hear.
As a patient, you do have the right to refuse to be treated by anyone. You may have to wait for a physician to be available, but no one can treat you without your consent and you can always ask for a provider’s title and licensure.
I don’t think I’ve ever been to a Nurse Practitioner without knowing exactly what the outcome would be, and realistically that does take a lot of burden off doctors so long as they correctly recognise what they should and shouldn’t do.
I expect that rules will catch up with the existence of LLMs, the problem is for those few generations that have to live through the transition period…