“Many roads lead to Rome and the Artificial Intelligence only shows me one road”: an interview study on physician attitudes regarding the implementation of computerised clinical decision support systems
Open accessAbstract
Research regarding the drivers of acceptance of clinical decision support systems (CDSS) by physicians is still rather limited. The literature that does exist, however, tends to focus on problems regarding the user-friendliness of CDSS. We have performed a thematic analysis of 24 interviews with physicians concerning specific clinical case vignettes, in order to explore their underlying opinions and attitudes regarding the introduction of CDSS in clinical practice, to allow a more in-depth analysis of factors underlying (non-)acceptance of CDSS. We identified three general themes from the results. First, ‘the perceived role of the AI’, including items referring to the tasks that may properly be assigned to the CDSS according to the respondents. Second, ‘the perceived role of the physician’, referring to the aspects of clinical practice that were seen as being fundamentally ‘human’ or non-automatable. Third, ‘concerns regarding AI’, including items referring to more general issues that were raised by the respondents regarding the introduction of CDSS in general and/or in clinical medicine in particular. Apart from the overall concerns expressed by the respondents regarding user-friendliness, we will explain how our results indicate that our respondents were primarily occupied by distinguishing between parts of their job that should be automated and aspects that should be kept in human hands. We refer to this distinction as ‘the division of clinical labor.’ This division is not based on knowledge regarding AI or medicine, but rather on which parts of a physician’s job were seen by the respondents as being central to who they are as physicians and as human beings. Often the respondents’ view that certain core parts of their job ought to be shielded from automation was closely linked to claims concerning the uniqueness of medicine as a domain. Finally, although almost all respondents claimed that they highly value their final responsibility, a closer investigation of this concept suggests that their view of ‘final responsibility’ was not that demanding after all.
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Professionals believe that AI would increase their efficiency in managing medical information and knowledge, by being granted quick access to vast amounts of knowledge with the ability to scan and summarize relevant information effectively, or being able to handle big-data records in real-time.
“Furthermore, the professionals believe that AI would increase their efficiency in managing medical information and knowledge, by being granted quick access to vast amounts of knowledge with the ability to scan and summarize relevant information effectively with the help of AI [29, 30, 46–49] or being able to handle big-data records in real-time [50, 51].”
From Healthcare professionals’ perspectives on artificial intelligence in patient care: a systematic review of hindering and facilitating factors on different levels (2025) · cites this paper as [49]
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Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe main quality of care benefits from AI integration is seen as an overall improvement in clinical outcomes by increasing patient safety and enhancing medical standards.
“The main quality of care benefits from AI integration is seen as an overall improvement in clinical outcomes [33, 54, 55, 79, 80, 84] by increasing patient safety [32, 46, 49, 72] and enhancing medical standards [85].”
From Healthcare professionals’ perspectives on artificial intelligence in patient care: a systematic review of hindering and facilitating factors on different levels (2025) · cites this paper as [49]
The Results > Safety section reports that several physicians believed AI-supported clinical decision systems would increase patient safety. It does not establish improved clinical outcomes or describe enhanced medical standards as benefits; the Background says evidence of improved care is scarce and notes cases that failed to improve clinically relevant outcomes. No page numbers are available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.87)
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Physicians’ required competencies in AI-assisted clinical settings: a systematic review
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- Authors
- Van Cauwenberge, D., Van Biesen, W., Decruyenaere, J., Leune, T., & Sterckx, S.
- Affiliations
- Ghent University Hospital (BE)
- Corresponding author
- Sterckx, Sigrid
- Venue
- BMC Medical Ethics
- Published
- 2022-05-06
- Volume
- 23
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 50-50
- ISSN
- 1472-6939 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC9077861
- OpenAlex
- W4229001519
- Cited by
- 43
- References
- 5
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 8
- FWCI
- 2.79
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- BMC Medical Ethics (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO.OPR.2019.0045.01.)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Health Informatics › Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Health Information Management › Electronic Health Records Systems
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Technology and Human Factors in Education and Health
- Keywords
- clinical decision support systems, physician attitudes, technology acceptance, artificial intelligence in healthcare, clinical vignettes
- MeSH terms
- Artificial Intelligence, Attitude, Humans, Physicians, Rome, Decision Support Systems, Clinical, Qualitative Research
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