1 Plan your four weeks with ChatGPT: research first, then decide

About 60 minutes

In short

The idea. Before you decide what to learn, ask ChatGPT what the field expects, with sources. Then add what only you know: your specialty, how you learn, and what worries you.
What you do. Ask ChatGPT to research what doctors in training should know about AI, open two of its sources, let it interview you, and build your plan.
What you keep. A plan for the four weeks, with one topic a week to learn with AI, and a journal template.
Short on time? Read “The list you cannot finish”, then do the setup and steps 1, 3 and 4. That is the Thursday session.

What you’ll learn

By the end of this chapter you will have:

Set up ChatGPT for the course, with a project that keeps your chats together.
Asked ChatGPT to research what medical educators think doctors in training should know about AI, and checked two of its sources yourself.
Worked with ChatGPT to turn that research, and your own goals and background, into a plan for the four weeks, with one topic a week to learn with AI.
Saved the plan in a form you will use: a document, a spreadsheet, or slides, plus your journal template.
Decided whether to share your plan with your classmates.
Learned how to come back to the plan each week and change it.

Course competencies: AIM-5 (clinical use), AIM-9 (research and scholarship), AIM-X (professional identity).

What you need. A laptop and your university ChatGPT Edu or Copilot account. Nothing to install. Nothing in this chapter involves a patient. This chapter is the Thursday 15 October hands-on session; if you miss the session, do it on your own.

1.1 The list you cannot finish

It is Thursday of week 1. You have sat through three talks. You have an interview next Tuesday and a sub-internship evaluation you are still waiting for. The course offers a core chapter and a menu of others each week, guest talks in cardiology, pediatrics, and psychiatry, and a set of open labs. You have about eight hours a week. You cannot do all of it, and nobody has told you which parts matter for you.

You will have this problem again on the first day of every rotation in residency. There is a reading list nobody finishes, and a senior who says “read what matters.” The residents who handle it well do two things in order. First they find out what the field expects: the rotation’s goals, what the attendings ask about, what the specialty’s own guidance says. Then they compare that with what they already know and want, and choose.

That is research before deciding. A chatbot can do much of the first step in a few minutes, if you ask it to show its sources. The second step is yours. This chapter does both, and at the end you have a plan for the next four weeks that started with evidence and fits you.

1.2 Why this matters

This is your first real task with ChatGPT in the course, and it is not patient care on purpose. The stakes are low, the topic is you, and you will know at once whether the answer fits. That makes it a good way to learn what the tool can do: search the web, summarize, interview you, and make a document or a spreadsheet. You will use the same features later on harder problems.

The habit is the bigger point. When you bring any problem to a chatbot, a general question gets a general answer. “What should I learn about AI?” gets the same list for everyone. If you first ask what is already known, with sources, and then add your own situation, the answer is about your problem. This works for a learning plan, a quality-improvement project, or a talk you have to give. It is the same order you use with a patient: gather the history and the evidence before you decide.

1.3 How it works

1.3.1 Ask for research, not an answer

ChatGPT can search the web while it answers. When it does, it shows links to the pages it used. It usually searches on its own when a question needs current information; if an answer has no links, ask it to search.

Ask, then check. Most of the links will be real and on topic, but a link is not proof. A chatbot can attach a real link to a claim the page does not make. So you open two of its sources and read what they actually say. The foundations chapter explains why this happens; here you only need the habit.

1.3.2 You decide

The research tells you what educators and professional groups think matters. It cannot tell you that you are going into psychiatry, that you learn best by building something, or that you are worried about what to say when a patient asks whether AI wrote your note. Only you know that. A good plan uses both: the field’s view, so you do not miss something important, and your own, so you actually follow it.

1.3.3 One topic a week, learned with AI

The main hands-on work of the course is Learn it with AI: 2 to 4 hours a week, on your own, using AI to teach yourself a topic you choose. Your plan names that topic for each week. It can be the same topic all four weeks.

1.3.4 A plan that changes

The plan is a first draft. In week 2 a talk will interest you more than you expected, or a chapter will turn out to matter less. When that happens, bring the plan back to ChatGPT and change it. Each week’s learning journal asks what you chose to learn and why, so the plan and the journal work together.

1.4 Set up ChatGPT

Use a laptop, not a phone: you will copy long prompts and open links side by side. Use your university account. At CU Anschutz that is ChatGPT Edu; the Canvas page “Get your ChatGPT Edu account” explains how to get it. If your ChatGPT Edu account is not ready, use your university Microsoft Copilot account today, and move your work over later.

Go to chatgpt.com and sign in with your university email.
Check the bottom left of the screen. At CU Anschutz it should say “CU - Anschutz (Edu)”. If it does not, you are in a personal account. Say so in the session, or ask at office hours.
Make a project for this course. Find Projects in the left sidebar, make a new one, and name it “AI in Medicine”. A project keeps the chats for this course together, so you can come back to them.
Start a new chat inside the project.

No Projects in your account? Start a chat named AI in Medicine.

1.5 Do: build your plan

In the session (about 40 minutes): set up, then steps 1, 3 and 4. Step 2 is optional. After the session, before tonight’s journal (about 10 minutes): steps 5 and 6. Step 7 is for the weeks ahead.

Copy each prompt into the same chat, in order. Fill in the parts in brackets first. ChatGPT remembers what came earlier in the chat, so each step builds on the last.

1.5.1 1. Prepare: gather what the field says (in the session, 10 minutes)

I'm a fourth-year medical student applying in
[your specialty, or "undecided"]. I'm starting a
four-week course on AI in medicine.

Search the web for what medical educators and
professional groups say doctors in training should
know about AI. Look for curriculum frameworks,
competency lists, and statements from groups such as
the AAMC or specialty societies, from the last three
years. Also look for what AI is changing in
[your specialty].

List 6 to 10 sources. For each one, give who wrote it,
the year, the link, and one sentence on what it says.

Now open two of the links. Does the page exist? Does it say what ChatGPT said it says? Write down what you found. That is your check for question 2 of this week’s learning journal.

1.5.2 2. Summarize: find the themes (optional, 5 minutes)

If you have time, ask for the themes. If not, go straight to step 3.

Group what these sources say into 4 to 6 themes: the
things doctors in training are expected to know or be
able to do about AI. For each theme, name the sources
that support it. Mark any theme that only one source
supports.

1.5.3 3. Decide: let it interview you (in the session, 10 minutes)

Now interview me, one question at a time, about what I
want from this course: my background, what I have
tried with AI so far, what worries me about it, how I
learn best, and where AI might help my work as a
resident.

After about six questions, suggest 3 to 5 learning
goals in my own words. Link each goal to a source or
theme from the research, or say that it is mine alone.
Then ask me what I want to change.

Answer each question in a sentence or two. There are no wrong answers. If you do not know what you want yet, say that; it is a useful answer.

When ChatGPT suggests your goals, make them yours. Change anything that does not sound like you. Ask for a goal to be smaller, bigger, or more about your specialty. Keep going until you would be happy to show the goals to a colleague. A goal that is yours alone, with no source behind it, is fine.

1.5.4 4. Create: make your plan (in the session, 10 minutes)

ChatGPT cannot read this book’s website, so the prompt below includes what the course offers. Copy all of it.

Turn my goals into a plan for the four weeks, using
what my course offers (below). For each week, list
the talks, chapters, or labs I will use, one topic I
will learn with AI (2 to 4 hours, on my own), and how
I will know it worked. Keep it to about 7.5 to 9.5
hours a week, including sessions. Leave room to
change it.
Then tell me which of my goals the course does not
cover, so I can learn them with AI.

What my course offers:
Week 1: How these systems work (how AI models learn,
  and why chatbots make things up). Thursday: this
  planning session.
Week 2: Prompting lab (getting good answers, and
  knowing their limits). Also: Critical appraisal
  (checking AI tools, their answers, and the evidence);
  Bias and equity; Grounding AI in real sources
  (tools that answer from documents you give them).
Week 3: Talking to patients about AI. Also: Agentic
  coding (build a small clinical tool, then test it);
  an ambient scribe lab (draft a note from a recorded
  visit, then check it).
Week 4: Ethics: what you owe when you sign a note
  drafted by AI. Also: Will AI take your job?; What AI
  costs the planet.
Every week: talks, guest talks from clinicians in
  several specialties, a Friday small group, and a
  weekly learning journal.
Every week, on my own: Learn it with AI, 2 to 4 hours
  using AI to teach myself a topic I choose. This is
  the main hands-on work of the course.

The syllabus has the same list with links to each chapter.

Ask for the plan in the form you will use: a table, a Word document, a spreadsheet, or a few slides. ChatGPT can make a file you download. If that does not work, copy the table into Word or Google Docs. Save it in a document you will keep, named “AI in Medicine plan”. Your chat stays in the project, so you can come back to it.

1.5.5 5. Create: your journal template (after the session, 5 minutes)

Before tonight’s journal, make your journal template in the same chat:

Using my goals, make a weekly learning journal
template I can fill in within 30 minutes, as a short
markdown template.

It must include these five course questions:
1. What I chose to learn, and why
2. How AI helped, and where it did not
   (including one time I felt I needed to check
   the AI: how I checked, and what I found)
3. What surprised me
4. What changed for me
5. What I used, and whether it was worth my time

Add one or two headings of your own that connect each
entry to my goals.

Move, rename, or cut the extra headings until the template suits how you think. The five course questions stay. Add the template to your “AI in Medicine plan” document.

1.5.7 7. Follow through: come back each week

The plan is meant to change. Each week:

Open the “AI in Medicine” project and start a new chat.
Paste in your plan and your last journal entry.
Ask:

Here is my learning plan and my last journal entry.
What did I do, what did I skip, and what should I
change for next week? Ask me before you change
anything.

Start a new chat each week rather than one long one. Very long chats can lose track of what was said earlier. Your document carries what matters from week to week.

1.6 Check

Look at your plan and ask:

Table 1.1: What a good plan looks like.

Check	A good plan
The research is in it	You can say which theme or source led to each part, or that the part is yours alone
You are in it	It mentions your specialty, how you learn, or what worries you, not only the course’s topics
You checked something	You opened two sources and know whether they said what ChatGPT said
You learn with AI each week	Each week names one topic you will learn with AI, and why you chose it
It fits	About 7.5 to 9.5 hours a week, as the syllabus says, with room to change
It can change	You know when you will look at it again, and how

1.7 Standing question

Go back to Thursday morning and the list you could not finish. You still cannot do all of it. But you now know what the field thinks matters, which of those things the course covers, and which ones you care about.

Two of this week’s journal questions fit this session. For question 1, what you chose to learn and why, name one goal you kept that no source told you to. For question 3, what surprised you, say what the research showed you that you would not have picked on your own.

1.8 The rules

The course has four rules:

Use your university ChatGPT Edu or Copilot account. Never put real patient information into a course activity. Check what matters before you rely on it. You sign the note.

What counts as patient information is on its own page.

1.9 Go deeper

OpenAI, Plan something from start to finish (about 20 to 25 minutes): a guided practice that runs in your browser with sample data, so you do not need an account. You plan a team dinner in the same six steps this chapter uses: prepare, summarize, decide, create, share, follow through. It uses ChatGPT Work, which your account may not have; this chapter’s Do works in an ordinary chat.
OpenAI, ChatGPT Training: short walkthroughs on projects, documents and slides, and voice. Several use ChatGPT Work, which your account may not have.
OpenAI, Projects and chats: when to use a project, and what it keeps.
What the field expects: the AAMC’s work and the published AI competency frameworks for medical students. Use it to check what your research in step 1 found, and what it missed.