When getting ChatGPT to handle your patient complaints, choose a neutral writing style.
A practice in Melbourne has been referred to AHPRA for using ChatGPT to respond to patient complaints, it has emerged.
“We started to use ChatGPT, which is OpenAI’s language model, at the tail end of 2022,” Dr Bridget Colander told The Medical Republic.
“We’d just lost a full-time doctor, our workload was increasing and we were seeing an inevitable rise in patient complaints. We just weren’t able to keep up with patient demand.”
To save time a member of admin staff manually keyed the patient’s complaint into ChatGPT and the response, which the computer took a matter of seconds to generate, was printed out and posted off to the patient.
“It was working really well,” continued Dr Colander; “but then one of the new admin staff must have clicked ‘write response in the style of a Shakespearean sonnet’ and things went horribly wrong.”
The practice shared some of the more flowery AI responses with The Medical Republic.
One patient wrote to the practice manager to complain about the gap fees which had just been introduced. The AI program responded:
Alas penny pincher, ’tis true the cost doth rise,
Like the tide upon the shore, it never dies,
But fear not, for in the hands of a skilled physician,
The health and wellbeing shall be the true mission.
Though gold doth glitter, true worth doth lie
In the care for thine body and mind on high.
So let us not fret about the earthly cost,
For the value of thy health shall not be lost.
Yours Sincerely,
Dr Colander
In response to a patient who complained that their itchy haemorrhoids weren’t being taken seriously, ChatGPT responded:
Oh, fair patient, do not let thy itch be in vain,
Though the physician may have not recognised thy pain,
Take heed and seek a second opinion,
For ’tis utmost importance not to let thy ailment fester
For haemorrhoids and piles are thin gruel for the Jester.
And for another who signed his letter “furious patient” because he had to wait over an hour to see his GP, it produced:
Oh impatient soul, I do empathise with thy plight,
To wait so long to see the physician’s light,
But know that all good things come in due time,
And though the wait may be tedious
making thou furious,
thy cure shall be our prime.
Do not be discouraged, for the physician’s skill is worth the wait,
And in good health, thou shall soon celebrate.
“It’s a very embarrasing situation,” admitted Dr Colander.
“I am happy to report that some patients were delighted with their Shakespearean sonnets, while others sent them straight to AHPRA. We don’t want to be giving them ideas – although it does sound like they could use the help as much as we could.”
