Training a practice team on AI documentation

The written policy exists before anyone is trained, with a version number and a date the register records against. Writing an AI use policy for a medical practice.

The privacy collection notice and the patient explainer are updated in the same pass. One person owns the rollout and appears in the register as the trainer.

Everyone who will start a recording attends one session, doctors and nurses together, with the tool open on the device they will use in the room. Allow 45 minutes. Nurse-led clinics follow the same consent, review and signature.

The session covers:

• Starting and stopping a capture, and confirming consent aloud before capture begins
• Reading the draft against the consult, correcting it, and signing before the next patient
• Saying examination findings, reasoning and the plan aloud, which is what the draft is built from
• The correction path when an error reaches the record
• The clinician who signs the note is its author

Reception is briefed before the first recorded consult. Twenty minutes covers the script, rehearsed aloud once, and the three follow-ups.

“Dr Chen uses a tool that helps write up her notes. It listens during the appointment so she can focus on you, and she checks everything before it goes in your file. Are you happy with that? It's fine to say no.”

The three follow-ups are who can hear the recording, where the information is stored, and what happens if the patient declines, which is that the consult is documented the usual way. Wording for the ask in the room is on consent for AI scribes.

RACGP guidance discourages AI scribe use by first-term registrars, so a teaching practice states in its policy who may use a scribe at which stage of training and who approves it.

Locums and after-hours cover are handed a one-page summary at the start of the shift. New starters take the session inside induction, against the policy version current on their start date.

The register holds one row per person per session, and each row carries:

• Full name and role of the person trained
• Date of the session
• Topic, named closely enough to identify what was taught
• Version number of the AI use policy in force on that date
• Name of the person who delivered the session
• Signature, or a dated electronic acknowledgement, from the person trained

Week one runs with one or two clinicians who volunteered. Week two brings on the remaining clinicians and the nurse-led clinics, and reception runs the script for every booked patient. Count minutes spent on notes after the last patient, drafts that needed heavy correction, and patients who declined. Set the review date before go-live, about a month in.

A new register row is added when the policy version changes, when a new starter finishes induction, when what the tool may be used for changes, and after a correction to the record.