[hfo]

Physician here with ER experience (and IT too). I think it's quite realistic, except the relatives being in the ER room, giving orders to nurses. But that might be different in other hospitals and countries.

The reason for the edema is not given, perhaps cardiac insufficience, perhaps she didn’t take her pills (it is mentioned that she had dementia). Anyway, it’s possible that treatment has already been done but would take a few hours to fully set in, with the relatives impatiently waiting and seeing no improvement.

Explaining medical things to patients and relatives is difficult and a subject on its own in medschool. In extraordinary circumstances and without being able to do much on their own, people filter things they are told to what they want to hear. Sometimes you get feedback on what the patient understood, it's surprising and also the potential base of a lawsuit. There is a reason that you have to document so many things in writing. So I think it’s a smart idea to use AI to generate simple-language messages that are easily understood. It doesn’t matter if the medical content of the text is 100% correct, the message here is: ”Calm down, stand back, I handle this”.

[lukko]

I agree it's a realistic scenario. I always thought one of the most important things about being a junior doctor (FY1 / 2 in UK) was to be able to have these conversations with next of kin in a way that is empathic and easy for them to follow. If they are not processing the information then you have to allow for that, but I do think some relatives would react very badly if given a printout from an AI to explain a situation, patients always bring up if a doctor has googled their symptoms / rash in front of them, this is giving much more authority to the AI in a more sensitive and potentially difficult situation.

I think the way AI is used in medicine has to be thought about very deeply, I don't think it should just be a fallback in time-pressured or difficult scenarios.

[rediguanayum]

+1 Wife is an ER doc. She also agrees with the premise management that communicating medical facts to that patient and family is burdensome and time consuming, especially when there's pressure on the staff to see a high volume of patients. She has her own anecdotes similar to the story. There needs to be improvements in communication though she hasn't bought into ChatGPT being the right way to do this.