Increasing Realism and Variety of Virtual Patient Dialogues for Prenatal Counseling Education Through a Novel Application of ChatGPT: Exploratory Observational Study.

Background: Using virtual patients, facilitated by natural language processing, provides a valuable educational experience for learners. Generating a large, varied sample of realistic and appropriate responses for virtual patients is challenging. Artificial intelligence (AI) programs can be a viable source for these responses, but their utility for this purpose has not been explored.

Objective: In this study, we explored the effectiveness of generative AI (ChatGPT) in developing realistic virtual standardized patient dialogues to teach prenatal counseling skills.

Methods: ChatGPT was prompted to generate a list of common areas of concern and questions that families expecting preterm delivery at 24 weeks gestation might ask during prenatal counseling. ChatGPT was then prompted to generate 2 role-plays with dialogues between a parent expecting a potential preterm delivery at 24 weeks and their counseling physician using each of the example questions. The prompt was repeated for 2 unique role-plays: one parent was characterized as anxious and the other as having low trust in the medical system. Role-play scripts were exported verbatim and independently reviewed by 2 neonatologists with experience in prenatal counseling, using a scale of 1-5 on realism, appropriateness, and utility for virtual standardized patient responses.

Results: ChatGPT generated 7 areas of concern, with 35 example questions used to generate role-plays. The 35 role-play transcripts generated 176 unique parent responses (median 5, IQR 4-6, per role-play) with 268 unique sentences. Expert review identified 117 (65%) of the 176 responses as indicating an emotion, either directly or indirectly. Approximately half (98/176, 56%) of the responses had 2 or more sentences, and half (88/176, 50%) included at least 1 question. More than half (104/176, 58%) of the responses from role-played parent characters described a feeling, such as being scared, worried, or concerned. The role-plays of parents with low trust in the medical system generated many unique sentences (n=50). Most of the sentences in the responses were found to be reasonably realistic (214/268, 80%), appropriate for variable prenatal counseling conversation paths (233/268, 87%), and usable without more than a minimal modification in a virtual patient program (169/268, 63%).

Conclusions: Generative AI programs, such as ChatGPT, may provide a viable source of training materials to expand virtual patient programs, with careful attention to the concerns and questions of patients and families. Given the potential for unrealistic or inappropriate statements and questions, an expert should review AI chat outputs before deploying them in an educational program.