The persons behind our patients - Individualized assessment tools for personalized care

The persons behind our patients - Individualized assessment tools for personalized care
JAMA Internal Medicine; by Ruchi Bhatia; 6/2/25
In clinical medicine, we rely heavily on bulleted templates to conduct and document care. These templates help capture the complexity of the medical problems we treat... However, the checklists we use often fail to provide a holistic narrative of the patient’s story... Reviewing the details of these checklists during the visit may aid decision-making but limits face-to-face interactions and can distract from understanding the unique person in the patient... Relying exclusively on checklists can unintentionally prevent patients from sharing their personhood and will not elicit complex concerns, such as fears of getting older, dying, or being written off.
Publisher's note: Several recent stories we've covered extol the benefits of AI in healthcare; this story articulates some of the risks.