ChatGPT can help your injury recovery
You heard that correctly – ChatGPT can help injury recovery! Here’s how you can use your AI bestie to simplify your rehab process.
But first, DO NOT trust ChatGPT for complex diagnoses and treatment plans
For now, my job is safe (thank goodness) and it doesn’t look like AI will be replacing Physiotherapists anytime soon! The diagnosis component of AI is not yet advanced enough to provide accurate and reliable diagnoses for most patients.
I had a patient recently who had sought help from Dr ChatGPT for a pelvis injury. They had done all of the exercises and advice that ChatGPT provided, and weren’t seeing any results. In fact, their pain was starting to feel worse. After meeting this patient and gathering a very detailed history from the patient, it was evident that there was no pelvis injury, and instead the pain was driven from the low back. This was confirmed when we did the testing and all of the pelvic exams was not at all provocative. So, how did our lord and saviour ChatGPT mess this up?
AI platforms like ChatGPT draw information from the available data online, however, Dr ChatGPT isn’t yet advanced enough to ask for further information to differentially diagnose, and furthermore this platform doesn’t allow for there to be objective assessment of the patient (i.e. no testing of movements). Without these important tests, it can sometimes be difficult to precisely diagnose the injury or figure out the extent of the injury.
Additionally, much like medication, exercises have to be provided at the correct dosage. The exercise that ChatGPT gave my client was far too advanced for what their body could take. And it is true - too much of a certain exercise can actually make your injury and pain worse.
Now that my ChatGPT rant is done, let’s look at how you can use it to your advantage.
Once you receive your diagnosis and treatment plan from a health professional, it can be used in various ways:
Creating reminders to complete rehabilitation
Did you know that if you copy your treatment plan into ChatGPT it can make a phone lock screen with your exercises and advice? This can be a great reminder for people to complete their exercises.
It can also add your exercises in as a reminder to your diary so you can receive a notification to do your exercise.
Providing motivation to do rehabilitation exercises
If there is one thing I have learnt, it is that ChatGPT is a great cheerleader - if you are lacking motivation, prompting ChatGPT to motivate you can be a fantastic way of staying on track.
Tracking progress
If you have been told to keep an eye on your symptoms, ChatGPT can be a great way of doing this - it can prompt questions such as how intense your pain is, how much your joint can move etc. so that you can show your health professional at your consult.
AI isn’t all bad, and in a world that is constantly developing, I think the correct use of ChatGPT can definitely help people simplify their rehabilitation.
