Over the last 15 years, I have met a myriad of medical school applicants: some fueled by intense ambition, some exhausted, some used to excelling, but all overwhelmed. As the founder of a medical school admissions consulting company, we pride ourselves on taking away this sense of overwhelm. However, in the last year or so, med school applicants have begun turning to something else entirely: artificial intelligence.
At Inspira Advantage, we recently ran a survey of 145 pre-medical students across the U.S. to understand their mental health during the application process. Nearly 60% of med school applicants said they frequently feel overwhelmed by stress or anxiety while preparing their applications. Around 50% said they feel the need for therapy during the same tumultuous process. What came next, however, felt like a wake-up call.
More than half of the respondents were comfortable sharing sensitive mental-health-related information with an AI bot. Further, more than 55% said they believe that AI tools can improve their mental health not only in med school admission preparation but also in the healthcare field. It became clear that these aspiring healthcare professionals are in need of help, and AI is showing up for them, without the price tag or the busy schedules.
The next critical point was how these aspiring doctors believed AI could indeed improve their mental health. While close to 59% believed it would be through assigning tasks to AI bots, 29% said they would do so by discussing their mental health directly with an AI bot. So, it isn’t just AI’s role as a low-level assistant that students are relying on, it’s also its use as an emotional buffer.
Now, before we crown AI as the new study buddy and mental health saviour on campus, we must account for certain gaps.
As players in the medical school application space, we must rethink the support structures available to these young applicants. Some of these students are turning actively to free and omnipresent tools like AI to pry open their mental health issues without the much-needed human intervention because these services are either inaccessible or stigmatized. If universities and medical school campuses can responsibly use AI to streamline the access and affordability of mental health support services to students, it can lead to safer environments for our nation’s future doctors.
Furthermore, we need more awareness on the limitations of AI, integrated into the curricula as well. Now, students weren’t exactly oblivious to this. Nearly two-thirds of the survey respondents admitted that future physicians must understand the limitations and risks of using AI, both pre- and post-medical school.
It then becomes the responsibility of educational institutions, where students spend most of their time, to educate them on such perils, while simultaneously adopting AI practices to better prepare our next generation of doctors. For instance, today’s med students will inherit a world where patients walk in already having diagnosed their conditions and perhaps with even a customized care plan crafted using AI. Students, hence, need to speak that language fluently, or risk being overshadowed by it. School, thus, must equip them with these skills right from early undergraduate years.
For example, in February 2024, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), which runs the American Medical College Application Service — the centralized system for med school applications — said, “The use of AI tools is acceptable for brainstorming, proofreading, or editing the personal statement and other aspects of the application. However, applicants are asked to affirm that their final application submission is an accurate representation of their experience and represents their own work.”
Once students are in medical schools, institutions can introduce AI modules in pre-clinical training or elective courses in the use of AI in healthcare. Along with this must also follow courses in the ethical usage of AI, how it can endanger patient safety,
The time to fight AI is behind us. But as part of the medical school landscape, what we can do is inscribe policies and principles that guide students in their use of this currently open-for-all tool, both as a cognitive assistant and as an emotional anchor. AI does come with its risks, but with better literacy and ethical usage, we can ensure that we wield this tool responsibly — minimizing how it can harm us and maximizing how it can equip the next generation of doctors to care for themselves before saving others.
Arush Chandna is the co-founder of Inspira Advantage, a leading medical school admissions consulting firm.