Tag Archives: empathy

May 10, 2023 · 11:21 pm

Study finds ChatGTP outperforms physicians in providing high-quality, empathetic advice to patient questions

There has been widespread speculation about how advances in artificial intelligence (AI) assistants like ChatGPT could be used in medicine.

A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine led by Dr. John W. Ayers from the Qualcomm Institute within the University of California San Diego provides an early glimpse into the role that AI assistants could play in medicine. The study compared written responses from physicians and those from ChatGPT to real-world health questions. A panel of licensed healthcare professionals preferred ChatGPT’s responses 79% of the time and rated ChatGPT’s responses as higher quality and more empathetic.

“The opportunities for improving healthcare with AI are massive,” said Ayers, who is also vice chief of innovation in the UC San Diego School of Medicine Division of Infectious Disease and Global Public Health. “AI-augmented care is the future of medicine.”

Is ChatGPT Ready for Healthcare?

In the new study, the research team set out to answer the question: Can ChatGPT respond accurately to questions patients send to their doctors? If yes, AI models could be integrated into health systems to improve physician responses to questions sent by patients and ease the ever-increasing burden on physicians.

“ChatGPT might be able to pass a medical licensing exam,” said study co-author Dr. Davey Smith, a physician-scientist, co-director of the UC San Diego Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute and professor at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, “but directly answering patient questions accurately and empathetically is a different ballgame.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated virtual healthcare adoption,” added study co-author Dr. Eric Leas, a Qualcomm Institute affiliate and assistant professor in the UC San Diego Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science. “While this made accessing care easier for patients, physicians are burdened by a barrage of electronic patient messages seeking medical advice that have contributed to record-breaking levels of physician burnout.”

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Can Seven Questions Determine How Wise You Are?

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine report that an abbreviated, seven-item scale can help determine with high validity a person’s level of wisdom, a potentially modifiable personality trait that has been shown to have a strong association to well-being.

The study’s researchers had previously developed the 28-item San Diego Wisdom Scale (SD-WISE-28), which has been used in large national and international studies, biological research and clinical trials to evaluate wisdom.

But in a study published in International Psychogeriatrics, researchers found that a shortened seven-item version (SD-WISE-7 or Jeste-Thomas Wisdom Index), was comparable and reliable.

“Wisdom measures are increasingly being used to study factors that impact mental health and optimal aging. We wanted to test if a list of only seven items could provide valuable information to test wisdom,” said senior author Dilip V. Jeste, MD, senior associate dean for the Center of Healthy Aging and Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

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Tagged as compassion, empathy, intelligence, maturity, wisdom

May 5, 2016 · 12:04 am

Why You Should Have More Empathy – Wall Street Journal

“Sensitivity to other people’s emotions helps relationships; you can learn to be better at it,” the Journal says in the item by Elizabeth Bernstein.

In what seems like another life, back when I was going through marriage counseling, I learned that I needed to have more empathy to improve our relationship. Empathy is defined as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” Wikipedia says, “By the age of two, children normally begin to display the fundamental behaviors of empathy by having an emotional response that corresponds with another person.”

While my marriage didn’t survive, I did become much more sensitive about empathy and its value in all relationships. You can check out the link above to get the Journal’s take on empathy.

I mentioned empathy because it brought to mind a post I wrote several years ago which I am reblogging below.

Please feel free to share your views on this as I think it is an important subject.

Tony

What About Heroes Without Empathy?

I am asking about heroes without empathy because I really don’t know the answer. Over the past few years, we have been offered several heroes that have become hugely popular yet who do not seem to care at all about other people. They have no empathy.

Empathy is defined as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” Wikipedia says, “By the age of two, children normally begin to display the fundamental behaviors of empathy by having an emotional response that corresponds with another person.”

A hero is someone admired for achievements and noble qualities. Someone who demonstrates a lot of courage. The heroes below are over the top on achievements, but seem utterly lacking in empathy, a quality I consider a noble one.

I like movies and TV and as a retired guy indulge in my share. I am thinking of two heroes of popular TV shows and one of books and movies.

Noome Rapace as Lisbeth Salander

Lisbeth Salander is The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest and Played with Fire in Stieg Larsson’s memorable trilogy. Abused as a child, Lisbeth forged a successful life for herself that included physical combat, computer hacking, bisexuality, higher mathematics and a general off the grid existence. She hijacked the focus of millions of fans worldwide, but appeared incapable of fathoming the feelings of the person seated across from her in a room. Lisbeth is the first of my three heroes.

Jim Parsons as Dr. Sheldon Cooper

The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper is the number two. A Cal-tech theoretical physicist, according to Wikipedia, “Sheldon exhibits a strict adherence to routine, a total lack of social skills, a tenuous understanding of irony, sarcasm, and humor, and a general lack of humility or empathy.”

Jim Parsons who plays Sheldon has won Primetime Emmys, a Golden Globe Award, A TCA Award and a Critics’ Choice Television Award for his work on the series.

Sheldon dominates his roommate, Leonard, with The Roommate Agreement, a multi-page document that Leonard signed to come aboard. It is heavily weighted in Sheldon’s favor. He has a similar agreement with his girlfriend, Amy Farrah Fowler, about which she laments in one episode that she didn’t consult with a lawyer before signing.

Unlike Lisbeth Salander’s crushingly dark character, Sheldon is a bright incredibly comic character whose antics propel The Big Bang Theory to the top of the sitcom charts every year.

Lucy Liu as Dr. Joan Watson and Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock Holmes

The third hero is none other than Sherlock Holmes himself, in his latest incarnation on TV’s Elementary. Brought to life by Jonny Lee Miller, Holmes is a recovering drug addict with the lovely Lucy Liu as his ‘sober companion’ Dr. Joan Watson.
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