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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Med.
Sec. Healthcare Professions Education
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2024.1485325
This article is part of the Research Topic Innovative Teaching and Learning in Health Education and Promotion View all articles

Enhancing Fieldwork Readiness in Occupational Therapy Students with Generative AI

Provisionally accepted
Tara Mansour Tara Mansour *John Wong John Wong *
  • MGH Institute of Health Professions, Boston, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into health professions education is revolutionizing traditional teaching methodologies and enhancing learning experiences. This study explores the use of generative AI to aid occupational therapy (OT) students in intervention planning. OT students often lack the background knowledge to generate a wide variety of interventions, spending excessive time on idea generation rather than clinical reasoning, practice skills, and patient care. AI can enhance creative ideation but students must still adhere to evidence-based practice, patient safety, and privacy standards.Students used ChatGPT v. 3.5 in a lecture and assignment to integrate generative AI into intervention planning. Students analyzed a case study, generated ideas with ChatGPT, selected interventions that aligned with the client's needs, and provided a rationale. They conducted evidence-based searches and wrote an analysis on how the research influenced their decisions.The results demonstrate generative AI's potential as a valuable tool for OT students, enhancing their comfort with AI and understanding of ethical and safety considerations. Qualitative feedback highlighted AI's role in boosting efficiency and creativity in intervention planning, with most students expressing strong intent to use ChatGPT in clinical practice due to its ability to reduce cognitive load and generate innovative ideas. These findings suggest that integrating generative AI into the OT curriculum could enhance intervention planning and improve clinical readiness.

    Keywords: generative A.I., Evidence-Based Practice, Occupational Therapy, fieldwork, Clinical education, intervention planning

    Received: 23 Aug 2024; Accepted: 23 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Mansour and Wong. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Tara Mansour, MGH Institute of Health Professions, Boston, United States
    John Wong, MGH Institute of Health Professions, Boston, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.