AI Tool to Guide UC Medical Students Through Reflective Practice

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is changing the way people work, interact and function in their daily lives. At the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, AI is even being used to teach the next generation of physicians and enhance the quality of care they provide.

Matthew Kelleher, MD, MEd, associate professor in the department of pediatrics and physician at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital; Laurah Turner, PhD, associate dean for artificial intelligence and educational informatics; and a team of colleagues recently were awarded an American Medical Association grant to focus on using artificial intelligence in medical education and academic coaching. 

An AI-powered coaching tool called CAR-E (Coaching with AI-Reinforced Education) is being developed to provide on-demand, personalized coaching conversations for medical students and residents. 

The web-based AI tool will use a coaching approach to encourage reflective practice, prompting medical students and trainees to think back on their clinical encounters and knowledge gaps to gain insights and enhance their skills, decision-making and patient care.

“We’re really excited about the potential. This is the type of challenge that our medical students need,” Turner said. “We are hoping students are able to explore and really internalize the experiences that they are having during their medical education journey, and reflective practice is a big part of that journey.”

But teaching reflective practice can be a challenge. One goal is to use AI to augment human coaching in medical education, potentially leading to consistent conversations and support for more medical students and residents. The College of Medicine is already using AI models to create simulated clinical experiences for students.

Another goal is to further develop precision medical education, which uses data to individualize the training experience for each learner. The AI tool ideally will create memories, meaning it will remember all previous conversations, draw on a learner’s individual history and personalize its coaching.

“The University of Cincinnati College of Medicine is on the forefront of this innovation. We are the only institution doing this type of research and actually building our own AI-powered platforms. We are also doing it in a very responsible and systematic way in an effort to address concerns about using AI in educational and medical settings,” Turner said.

Kelleher already offers his expertise in medical education coaching to students, residents and colleagues, training them on best practices. Now the team will explore how AI can offer self-guided support. They hope the tool also will be able to help identify when human coaches may be needed for more complex situations.

The AI tool will be used first among a group of third-year medical students, as they complete their clinical rotations. Faculty members plan to survey users on their perceptions of the system's value and effectiveness. Ideally, it will be expanded to include much of the internal medicine residency program.

The grant, valued at $30,000, is from the AMA’s ChangeMedEd Initiative, which works toward creating a system that better trains physicians to meet the needs of current and future patients.

Others involved include faculty members Ben Kinnear, MD; Sally Santen, MD; Eric Warm, MD; and Danielle Weber, MD; as well as senior data reporting analyst Seth Overla and students Andrew Zahn and Weibing Zheng. 

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