Evidence map›Paper›PMID 40178360›Full record

ArticleAnnals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England2025

A quality improvement project of patient perception of AI-generated discharge summaries: a comparison with doctor-written summaries.

J Bass, C Bodimeade, N Choudhury

Abstract readComparative Study
In one paragraph

Article in Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
4citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

4 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Review
  3. Article
  4. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

J BassSurrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, UK.
C BodimeadeSurrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, UK.
N ChoudhurySurrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, UK.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

introductionEvery patient admitted to hospital should receive a discharge letter when they leave. Artificial intelligence (AI) has the capability to fulfil this task. Here, we investigate the use of AI to generate discharge letters compared with letters written by a doctor.

methodsUsing an AI tool, ChatGPT, we generated two discharge letters for hypothetical elective tonsillectomy patients. We asked the parents of paediatric tonsillectomy patients to blindly compare the AI letters with two anonymised real discharge letters for tonsillectomy patients, written by two ear, nose and throat (ENT) doctors. Participants were asked to rate the quality of medical information, the ease of reading and the length of each of the four discharge letters. They were also asked to deduce who they thought wrote each discharge letter (AI or a doctor).

resultsForty-seven parents responded to the survey. Our results demonstrate that the AI letters were reported to contain significantly better medical information (

conclusionsAI tools have the potential to write tonsillectomy discharge letters of comparable quality (as perceived by our participant population) to those written by ENT doctors. This study provides preliminary evidence to show that AI-generated discharge letters may be an interesting avenue of further investigation as an application for this tool.

Indexed as

Artificial IntelligencePatient DischargePatient Discharge SummariesQuality ImprovementChildFemaleHumansMaleParentsTonsillectomyArtificial intelligenceDischargeTonsillectomies

Identifiers

PMID40178360
PMCPMC12578589

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.