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| Evan Chavers, M.D., and Stephen Richardson, D.O., presented on AI tools in clinical psychiatry. |
The APPA is a district branch of the American Psychiatric Association.
Evan Chavers, M.D., a fourth-year psychiatry resident at USA Health, won first place for his presentation, “Evaluating Artificial Intelligence Tools in Psychiatry: Promises and Pitfalls.”
Chavers worked with third-year psychiatry resident Stephen Richardson, D.O., and William Tilllman III, M.D., on the project, which evaluated the current state of AI tools in clinical psychiatry including OpenEvidence, administrative tools for scheduling and letter writing, ambient scribe programs and LLM-based therapy chatbots.
They reviewed literature and their experiences with the tools to develop a “stoplight” model of safety/readiness for clinical use. “We gave a green light to workflow and administrative tools, yellow light for clinical decision support and ambient scribes, and a red light to therapy chatbots,” Chavers said. “We cautioned against the risks of ‘de-skilling’ or the atrophy of clinical skill, due to reliance on AI and pointed out that therapy chatbots have a long way to go in ensuring patient safety.”
Chavers said that while AI tools hold potential, physicians should always prioritize patient safety and privacy. “If you cannot critically evaluate the tool’s output based on your own clinical knowledge base, it should not be used,” he said.
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| Anthony Fant and Sebrina Burnett, D.O. |
The poster presented two simplified inpatient lithium loading strategies that can be used for rapid initiation and early maintenance in a hospital setting – a weight-based, extended-release loading protocol with a transition to once-nightly maintenance dosing, and a single-dose “test dose” loading protocol with a 24-hour level to predict the maintenance dose using the Cooper’s nomogram.
Fant said that both loading regimens presented an individualized approach to treatment, illustrating how medicine is becoming more personalized to each patient. “It goes to show that patients are frequently not ideal textbook cases, and having advancements in medicine that can be tailored to those individual nuances is what makes personalized medicine, in any specialty, very exciting for me,” he said.
Sebrina Burnett, D.O., a second-year psychiatry resident, worked with Fant on the presentation. “What was surprising to me regarding this topic was how well both of these methods worked when used at our inpatient psychiatric facility, and also how underutilized inpatient lithium loading is, in general, despite there being two relatively straightforward and safe methods available,” she said.
Other posters at the conference included:
- “The Impact of In-School and Out-of-School Suspension on Future Criminal Legal System Involvement and the Need for Mental Healthcare Collaboration in Prevention,” presented by Chelsea R. Miller, M.D., a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at USA Health/AltaPointe.
- “Lithium as a Potential Disease-Modifying Agent in Dementia: A Review of Emerging Evidence,” presented by Burnett.
- “Ketamine Administration Following an Acute Traumatic Event,” presented by Maria Verde, a third-year medical student at the Whiddon College of Medicine.
- “Ketamine-Assisted Buprenorphine Induction for Kratom-Induced Opioid Withdrawal,” presented by Billy Nguyen, M.D., a second-year resident.
- “Differentiating Between Catatonia and Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome,” presented by Alina Teslenko, D.O., a third-year resident.
- “Lithium Limbo: The Balance of Lithium Dosing and Toxicity,” presented by Leah Kunneth, a third-year medical student at the Whiddon College of Medicine.
- “From Thoughts to Thyroid: A Case Report on Subclinical Hypothyroidism and Depression,” presented by Caleb Thomas, a fourth-year medical student.
