Knowledge of and Attitudes on Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare: A Provincial Survey Study of Medical Students

Abstract

BackgroundThere has been growing acknowledgement that undergraduate medical education (UME) must play a formal role in instructing future physicians on the promises and limitations of artificial intelligence (AI), as these tools are integrated into medical practice.MethodsWe conducted an exploratory survey of medical students’ knowledge of AI, perceptions on the role of AI in medicine, and preferences surrounding the integration of AI competencies into medical education. The survey was completed by 321 medical students (13.4% response rate) at four medical schools in Ontario.ResultsMedical students are generally optimistic regarding AI’s capabilities to carry out a variety of healthcare functions, from clinical to administrative, with reservations about specific task types such as personal counselling and empathetic care. They believe AI will raise novel ethical and social challenges. Students are concerned about how AI will affect the medical job market, with 25% responding that it was actively impacting their choice of specialty. Students agree that medical education must do more to prepare them for the impact of AI in medicine (79%), and the majority (68%) believe that this training should begin at the UME level.ConclusionsMedical students expect AI will be widely integrated into healthcare and are enthusiastic to obtain AI competencies in undergraduate medical education.

Determinants of Intention to Use Artificial Intelligence-Based Diagnosis Support System Among Prospective Physicians

“…This result was congruent with findings among medical students worldwide, particularly those in the radiology field (13,14,18,52). Several previous studies found contradict results where the medical students stated that AI could not have a role as an alternative for the physicians in the future (33,53), particularly in some fields that need a "sense of caring" or "art of caring" such as psychological health or aging care (53)(54)(55). Many authors argued that AI should be treated as a virtual assistant rather than being a replacement for physicians in healthcare.…”

“…In a previous study, lack of trust in AI was the main contributor to the negative attitude among Chinese people toward the application of AI in healthcare (34). Another study in Canada found that medical students did not believe AI could deliver personalized and empathetic care (33). Thus, we hypothesized that trust would be positively associated with the behavioral intention to use AI systems in medical students.…”

“…Performance expectancy is found to be related to effort expectancy because it is supposed that people were more likely to perceive that one technology is useful if they ease using this technology (29). In literature, previous studies showed that medical students believed that AI would help to enhance the performance of practices and AI would be integrated deeply in healthcare, from administrative works to clinical routine (30)(31)(32)(33). Indeed, medical students are considered to have high AI literacy than current health professionals.…”

“…If they perceived that their tasks are difficult, they are more likely to accept the support from the AI system to increase their performance (i.e., performance expectancy). A study in Canada showed that medical students perceived the usefulness of AI in providing diagnosis, prognosis, building personalized medication, and performing robotic surgery, which indicated the promising roles of AI in addressing task complexity (33). Meanwhile, personal innovativeness in information technology (IT) means that one person is willing to try an innovation (particularly in IT) (39), while technology characteristics refer to the system, interface, etc.…”

Knowledge and attitudes of medical students in Lebanon toward artificial intelligence: A national survey study

“…Most of our respondents (90.3%,) agreed that AI will affect certain medical specialties more than others in terms of specialists being prone to be replaced by AI and job reduction. Similar results were found amongst the respondents in the provincial study by Mehta et al ( 2021 ) (250/288, 87%). We need to further evaluate the main specialties respondents think will be negatively impacted by AI in terms of job opportunities in hopes of uncovering misconceptions, if any, that can be addressed.…”