Actionable companion · Staff capability and AI literacy

From evidence to district action: Exploring the Challenges and Opportunities of ChatGPT in University Teaching for Health Sciences: A Narrative Review

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. The district actions are proposed applications, not findings or recommendations attributed to the original authors. No additional peer review is asserted.

Evidence and context

Health-professions education context: test transfer to K–12 rather than assuming it.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the linked source license:

Among generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, ChatGPT (OpenAI, San Francisco, CA, USA) has seen rapid adoption in the education sector due to its accessibility and versatility. While it supports a wide range of academic tasks, it also has significant limitations. Its difficulty in fully understanding the context of the conversations can lead to vague or inaccurate responses, raising questions about its reliability in educational and healthcare settings, where contextual accuracy is paramount. This narrative review aims to explore the challenges and prospects of using ChatGPT as a support tool in health science teaching and learning processes at the university level. A review of the scientific literature on the use of generative artificial intelligence was conducted in the main databases between April and May of 2025. Studies published between January 2023 and March 27, 2025, were included to access the most up-to-date information available. The studies had to focus on the use of generative AI in higher education settings, specifically in the field of health sciences. A total of 18 documents met the inclusion criteria and were selected for analysis. The results reveal that ChatGPT is widely used in undergraduate health education for tasks such as providing writing support, helping with content comprehension, generating quizzes, creating clinical simulations, and designing curricula. However, challenges such as misinformation, ethical concerns, and overreliance on AI were frequently noted. Additionally, disparities in access and lack of formal training for both students and educators were revealed to be significant barriers. In conclusion, ChatGPT has significant potential to improve teaching and learning in health sciences education by providing personalized support, real-time feedback, and resource creation. However, effectively integrating ChatGPT into health sciences education requires paying special attention to ethical standards, equitable access, and developing digital literacy to ensure it complements, rather than replaces, fundamental human expertise.

A 90-day district pilot

1. Days 1–15 · Appraise. Have the curriculum lead and a teacher read the methods and limitations. Record the study design, sample, comparator, outcomes and evidence gaps. Define a local question that the study can help inform.
2. Days 16–30 · Design. Run a staff workshop using three authentic lesson-planning tasks. Ask participants to identify hallucinations, revise outputs and document when they reject the tool. Name an accountable owner and set the baseline, success threshold and budget before implementation.
3. Days 31–60 · Test. Start with a small voluntary cohort, preserve an accessible non-AI route and require teacher review. Use synthetic or de-identified examples; approve data handling and tool terms through district processes.
4. Days 61–90 · Decide. Measure error-detection accuracy before and after training, preparation time and the quality of the final lesson plans. Compare with baseline, document uncertainty and stop or revise if learning worsens, access is unequal or critical errors persist.

The board decision brief

Report the learning problem, evidence quality, participating population, total cost including review time, measured benefit, errors, access differences and remaining uncertainties. Make a dated recommendation to stop, revise or expand. A positive perception survey alone does not establish learning improvement.

Attribution and reuse

Elena Arroyo-Bello; Beatriz González-Toledo; Jose Abad-Valle; Paloma Rodríguez-Gómez; Marta Garrigues-Ramón. Exploring the Challenges and Opportunities of ChatGPT in University Teaching for Health Sciences: A Narrative Review. Cureus (2025-10-10). https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.94259

Companion prepared 2026-10-30. Original authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract is an attributed source extract; the implementation plan is new AI-assisted editorial material, offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license. This guide has not undergone independent peer review.