Equipping doctors to use Generative AI safely, ethically and effectively

Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex (KSS) and Doctors Training have co-designed and co-delivered Generative AI (GenAI) training for NHS clinical staff, ensuring ethical, scalable, and high-quality workforce education.

In this blog, Aiswarya Nagasubramony, GP registrar, tells us more about the training and her role as an AI Clinical Lead for Health Innovation KSS.

Building AI foundations

I joined the Health Innovation KSS team in an integrated training post as part of my GP training. Prior to my involvement as a Clinical AI Fellow, my knowledge of AI in healthcare and its role in the NHS was limited.

Through my experience with Health Innovation KSS, I gained valuable insights into the relationship between primary and secondary care services, industry, educational bodies, and the Health Innovation Network.

This helped me to contextualise my day-to-day GP practice and empowered me to find ways to enhance my primary care experience by incorporating AI tools such as ambient voice technology (AI note-taking) into daily practice.

AI training by doctors, for doctors

As part of my role as a Clinical Lead, I support the design and delivery of training workshops for Specialty and Specialist (SAS) doctors with Doctors Training.

These workshops equip healthcare professionals with the practical knowledge and skills needed for the safe, ethical, and effective use of Generative AI (GenAI) tools in clinical practice.

SAS doctors are experienced medical professionals who play crucial roles in delivering patient care, mostly working in hospital specialties. They also contribute to teaching, service development, research, or management.

So far, we have delivered seven workshops across England, including with NHS England (East of England & Wessex), West London NHS Trust, Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and University Hospitals of Northamptonshire.

Workshops are delivered both face to face and virtually and can be a half or full day. They focus on building foundational AI literacy, AI ethics and regulatory frameworks, and practical applications of AI in the clinical workflow in various care settings.

Our priority is to deliver a hands-on, clinically relevant workshop designed by doctors for doctors, with the aim of each participant leaving with concrete skills and tools that would enhance their day-to-day practice and administrative workload.

Feedback has been extremely positive, with many attendees expressing a newfound enthusiasm and confidence for engaging with digital initiatives. They have consistently used these workshops to overcome their apprehensions and fears around AI and technological advancements in clinical practice.

The importance of AI training for doctors

There is a clear gap between the pace of AI development and procurement against the workforce’s ability to use these tools safely, critically, and effectively. Our workshops have targeted this need by focusing on building workforce capability and leadership in this area.

Themes which consistently arise during our discussions include concerns surrounding regulations, health equity, and safe use of AI.

By having evidence- based and candid discussions about the current status of evolving local and global AI regulations, we are able to acknowledge and critically appraise the strengths and limitations of the tools being implemented in clinical workflows.

Our workshops take our participants’ thinking from binary questions of “Is this AI good or bad?”, to analytical questions such as:

• What problem is this tool trying to solve?
• How has it been clinically validated?
• Who designed the tool and what inequalities might it exacerbate?
• How does it fit into the clinical workflow?
• What happens when it gets something wrong?

One of our sessions focuses on GenAI, what it is and how to use it effectively in day-to-day life to make our working day easier.

Participants take away tangible tips on prompt engineering and how they can maximise available GenAI tools such as Microsoft Copilot, which every NHS user has access to via their nhs.net email.

GenAI has become widespread, and it is essential for all clinicians to learn how to use these tools to enhance and support in order to build confidence.

With these discussions and skill-building activities, we are enabling safer implementation, reducing organisational risk, and supporting better and effective use of AI with direct implications for patient safety and quality of care.

AI and health equity

Health equity is an essential part in the design and deployment of AI to ensure that technologies benefit all patients fairly, regardless of their background, language, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status.

Highlighting that equity from the outset helps prevent harm, build public trust, and ensure that healthcare innovation truly supports inclusive, safe, and high-quality care for everyone.

Health inequities can arise from a variety of factors. If AI tools are trained on incomplete or biased datasets, they can reproduce and amplify existing inequalities.

Digital exclusion is also a major point of discussion; as we move towards a digital front door, how do we empower patients and clinicians at the fringes of technology to utilise AI tools to their benefit? Without careful design and auditing, AI can widen the gap and worsen the disparities.

We evaluate AI tools used by the NHS to explore health equity principles in practice, identifying potential biases that may arise and how to mitigate those biases with safeguards in the workflow.

We also highlight health equity frameworks developed by Health Innovation KSS to support innovators and clinicians when critically appraising AI tools before they are procured or implemented in clinical practice.

Turning fear to capability

AI is shaping how clinicians work, learn, and deliver care. For doctors to use it well, we need confidence, critical thinking, and strong grounding in safety, ethics, and equity.

These workshops have shown that when clinicians are given the right tools and space to explore AI, fear can turn into capability.

As AI continues to grow, empowering doctors to lead its responsible use will be essential to ensuring it improves care for both patients and staff.

With thanks to Aiswarya for her thoughts

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