AI for Surgeons

Prompts That Help Surgeons Before, During, and After

1. The lessons

   1. Explaining Surgery to Patients: Patients get clearer explanations and instructions while you save time on repetitive communication.
   2. Clinical Documentation Drafting: You produce faster first drafts of patient histories, operative notes, and discharge summaries.
   3. Preoperative Planning Support: You prepare a thorough preoperative plan and checklist before the patient reaches the operating room.
   4. Surgical Team Coordination: You run smoother briefings, handoffs, and debriefs with team-ready talking points.
   5. Diagnostic Reasoning Assistance: You organize clinical findings into a structured differential and case presentation for your own review.
   6. Postoperative Care Planning: You create clear post-op care plans, warning signs, and follow-up schedules for patients.
   7. Consent and Risk Discussion: You prepare consent conversations and risk explanations that patients can understand and act on.
   8. Quality Improvement and Learning: You turn cases and guidelines into learning points and improvement plans for your practice.
2. What the Course Covers

   The eight lessons follow the shape of a surgical case, from the first clinic conversation through the operation, the ward round, and the follow-up. Each one targets a task that repeats, so the time you save compounds.

   You will write prompts for patient explanations, operative notes, preoperative checklists, team briefings, differentials, post-op plans, consent discussions, and case review.

3. How the Lessons Connect

   The early lessons build the habit of giving the assistant clear context: the patient's situation, the procedure, the audience, and the tone you want. Later lessons reuse that same structure with more clinical detail.

   By the final lesson you are feeding your own cases and guidelines back in, so the prompts start to reflect how you actually practise.

4. Using the Prompts Well

   A good prompt names the reader, sets the length, and asks for plain language. If the first answer is too general, you add one detail and try again rather than starting over.

   Always read what comes back as if a trainee wrote it. Correct the facts, adjust the tone, and keep the parts that save you time.

5. Who This Course Is For

   It is written for practising surgeons and surgical trainees who write and explain a great deal and have little spare time. No technical background is expected.

   Consultants, registrars, and surgical teams in hospitals of any size will find something usable in the first lesson.

6. Safety and Privacy in Surgery

   You will learn how to keep identifying details out of your prompts, how to describe a case in general terms, and when to keep the work entirely off the tool.

   The course also covers checking output for errors, since a confident sentence is not the same as a correct one, and your name sits on the final document.

7. Your Next Step

   Pick the lesson that matches the task you dislike most, and use it on a real case this week. Keep the prompt that works in a note you can find again.

   Then move to the next lesson when your schedule allows. Small, repeated use is what turns this into a habit.