Medical Student Oregon Health and Science University Portland, Oregon, United States
Introduction: Health literacy is a challenge in spine surgery and impacts patient-reported outcomes. A generative artificial intelligence tool, like ChatGPT, may be able to assist physicians in writing patient-friendly patient instructions. Wound care is part of every patient’s discharge instruction and a possible area for improvement.
Methods: Emergency spine surgery patients were randomized to recieve ChatGPT-written wound care instructions at a third grade reading level or physician-written wound care instructions over the phone. The most notable changes by ChatGPT were replacing “incision” with “cut” and explaining what “Dermabond” glue is. They were surveyed before and after the intervention to measure their knowledge and attitudes.
Results: Out of 60 eligible patients, 34 (57%) completed both surveys. Patient’s wound care knowledge did not increase from baseline in either the ChatGPT or the physician-written script group. All patients reported greater agreement with the statement “I know what I need to do to care for my wound” and “My wound care instructions are easy to understand” regardless of what script they heard. Only one patient, who heard the physician-written script, had a post-operative surgical site infection within 30 days of surgery, requiring oral antibiotics and wound revision.
Conclusion : We found that ChatGPT written wound care instructions performed similarly to the physician-written instructions for patients after emergency spine surgery. Therefore, providers may feel comfortable utilizing ChatGPT when necessary to adjust their patient instructions without sacrificing patient understanding.
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