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by michaelbuckbee 56 days ago
My sister in law is a pharmacist and the heaviest non-dev ChatGPT user I know and her main use case is writing professionally polite messages to doctors on how the drugs they prescribed to a patient would have killed them had she not caught a particular interaction or common side effect.

There's a lot of "tone" in it as she's not trying to anger these folks, but also it's quite serious, but also there's just everything else happening in medicine.

Feels like a great use.
2 comments
ryandrake 56 days ago
Pretty neat. This kind of tone self-moderation comes naturally to good communicators, but I know people (on and off the spectrum) who really, really need help with this, and it's cool to see LLMs are able to do this. There are a surprising number of people in the business world who are just totally unable to tone-police themselves. In the medical field I'd be worried about hallucinations, of course, but presumably your SIL fact-checks the output.
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hamdingers 56 days ago
She does herself a disservice by outsourcing that skill. One day she might have to actually talk to one of these people.
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michaelbuckbee 56 days ago
She's 50 years old has a doctorate in pharmacy and has worked as a hospital pharmacist for two decades.

I don't say this as a "gotcha", but more that even with all that experience she still finds it beneficial and helpful.

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hamdingers 55 days ago
That makes it more sad, to me. Someone with those credentials should be able to communicate with their colleagues effectively. I wonder if she used to be able to.

It appears Hacker News disagrees that social skills are valuable skills. Mea culpa, I should have guessed.

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PoignardAzur 55 days ago
There's something ironic about complaining about other people's social skill while you couldn't be bothered to make a point without sounding dismissive and condescending.
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janderson215 54 days ago
Navigating tough conversations takes time, attention, and mental energy. I’d rather a pharmacist spend that time on catching another dangerous contraindicated combo of drugs for a different patient. Actually, AI should soon be checking for that, too.
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