Your NHS notes might be AI fiction
If you see a GP or hospital consultant in the NHS, ask them one question: “Are you using AI to write my notes?”I want to share something that has genuinely shocked me, and to warn others about how AI is being used in NHS appointments without patients realising the risks.GPs and hospital consultants are increasingly using AI software to compile patient notes. On the surface, that might sound efficient. But here’s what happened to me.I recently saw two different GPs at my local surgery. When I later checked my clinical notes, I found serious errors, not from bad intentions, but from AI “filling in the gaps.”Two examples of what happened to me:I said: I am suffering from recurrent negative dreams during a period of grieving my children’s father’s recent passing.AI wrote: “I feel like I am dreaming, hallucinating and the devil is chasing me.”I said: “My pompholyx eczema on my hands makes it difficult for me to carry out daily tasks.”AI wrote: “Her pompholyx eczema is impacting her ability to talk.”Neither of these were what I said. They change meaning entirely, and could easily lead to wrong referrals, wrong medication, or a completely inaccurate picture of my health.When I raised this with the surgery, their response was: one GP suffers from dyslexia, the other’s first language isn’t English. Honestly, you couldn’t make this up.At West Middlesex Hospital weeks later, I saw a consultant who started reading from my notes. I told him to ignore them and explained the GP/AI issue. His reply?“I use AI to write my notes too, and I don’t check them either.”Let that sink in. A consultant admitted, openly, that he doesn’t check what the AI writes before it becomes part of your permanent medical record.And here’s the kicker: once those notes are submitted, I’ve been told they cannot be edited or removed. The only thing that can be done is to add a later note, but the original, incorrect AI-generated text stays.So please, when you visit anyone in the NHS, GP, nurse, consultant, whoever, ask if they are using AI to write up their notes. If they say yes, ask them to read the notes back to you before they submit them.Don’t assume they’ve checked. Don’t assume the AI got it right. This isn’t about blaming individual clinicians, it’s about a system quietly introducing risks that patients aren’t being told about.
Louise Smith ● 97d5 Comments