HEALTHCARE · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE · PATIENT EXPERIENCE Years ago, at a government hospital, I heard a surgeon say about a patient who kept asking him questions, "She must be a teacher." He was half-joking. She turned out to be one. It became my private joke: anyone who asks that many questions must be a teacher. I didn't know I'd think of that remark again. I think of it now because the patient who asks too many questions is no longer rare. She is in my family. Perhaps you have encountered her, too. A new kind of conversation My mother, my uncles, and my aunts are not medical professionals. When an unfamiliar symptom appears, they don't know the terminology, the likely causes, or the right questions to ask. But they have found ChatGPT and Gemini, and they talk to them like buddies. A symptom prompts a question, an answer prompts another, and nobody waits. Voice input matters most. They don't have to type a carefully worded query or know the medical term. ...
It was a wonderful experience raising and educating my children though I had nothing planned out but the way it shaped out was wonderful. I am a dentist by profession but I think I was a better teacher. It so happened that I used to color maps of India and show to my son ten times a day for many days never realizing the impact. One day while watching weather forecast on DD news he started shouting" mummy India ka map India ka map". I was very impressed and then began our hours of togetherness. Two of us would talk and notice all that went around us . We played all day and I would often run upstairs after my clinic to my overjoyed children. Reading stories came very early in our house initially we saw pictures then it progressed to reading words and then sentences.Bed time was story time from Panchatantra to Ramayana to Indian mythology to stories and incidents all over the world. They knew about Pompeii ruins and casts and Paul Revere's Ride and Troja...