Shifts in Emergency Physicians’ Attitudes Toward Large Language Model-based Documentation: A Pre- and Post-Implementation Study

Large language models (LLMs) can help physicians write medical notes more efficiently. We studied whether using an LLM assistant for writing emergency department discharge notes would reduce doctors' workload and address their concerns about using AI in real medical practice. Eight emergency doctors with an average of 12 years of experience participated in our study. We surveyed them before using the LLM assistant, after 3 days, and after 5 weeks of use. The results showed that doctors' concerns about using LLMs decreased significantly and stayed low throughout the study period. Their perceived workload also dropped considerably. Additionally, the time needed to write each discharge note was reduced to one-third of the original time. These findings demonstrate that doctors readily accepted and benefited from the LLM assistant in their daily practice. Our study provides the first real-world evidence of how doctors' attitudes toward AI assistants change over time in clinical settings, offering valuable insights for future implementation of LLM-based documentation tools in healthcare.