HEALTHCARE · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE · PATIENT EXPERIENCE Years ago, at a government hospital, I heard a surgeon say about a patient who kept asking him, "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. They speak...
My life continued to revolve around my two sons and house. I was full of contentment for all that I had. The desire to learn to drive a car was never there, even when coaxed to learn that flame never kindled. No amount of persuasion could take me behind the steering wheel. “I have a full-time driver (my husband) who would take me wherever and whenever I shall go” is all I could say to justify my action. I started learning to drive after immense persuasion from all quarters. Every day I touched the vehicle, I convinced myself of my [dis]abilities to learn it. The dogged helplessness I felt after helping a stray dog to make an obituary and a near-fatal accident at a right-angled crossing near my home paved the way to let driving be a distant dream for me. Overcoming those mental barriers to resume my driving lessons took almost three years. I finally succumbed to my sisterly pressures and took to wheels. My sister would always call me at four in the evening to ” Take the car and go.” Ano...