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...
Some people discover their passion early. As a child, I often wrote with chalk on the doors of our home like a teacher, taking classes for imaginary students sitting on the floor. Some months later, real friends became my students, comfortably seated on the chairs—a clear sign of progress. Finding a passion to pursue is just the beginning. The journey ahead requires skills and hard work. It was the high road to BECOMING (Michelle Obama). 1984 (George Orwell), the year I became who I am— it marked the beginning of my journey as a Dentist. My journey had a trail of milestones. Clearing the Combined Pre-Medical Test was the first such milestone, gaining admission into one of the most prestigious dental schools, yet another. What followed was graduation, then post-graduation, and more milestones. I was EDUCATED (Tara Westover). Both personally and professionally, the environment around me changed. I was evaluating and learning. Years later, when my little birds flew away, an empty nest r...