Cross‐sectional investigation into early use of <scp>ChatGPT</scp> in education among genetic counseling students and faculty

The integration of openly accessible large language models like Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT) in graduate education is rapidly evolving, and it is important for institutions to understand how students and educators utilize it in their learning and teaching processes. This is especially true for different fields in healthcare and medicine that involve a high burden of content learning combined with psychosocial counseling. This cross-sectional study aimed to explore the use and perceptions of ChatGPT among students and faculty in North American genetic counseling programs. Sixty-two faculty and 99 student participants completed an online survey through the membership listserv of the National Society of Genetic Counselors and Genetic Counselor Educators Association (formerly the Association of Genetic Counseling Program Directors at the time of this study) organizations. The survey contained multiple choice and open-ended questions about their use of ChatGPT. Results indicated that 21.8% of faculty and 37.3% of students utilized ChatGPT in their educational activities. Faculty primarily used it for course content development and as a teaching aid, while students leveraged it to assist mostly with writing skills and explanation of concepts. Faculty expressed apprehension about ChatGPT potentially diminishing students' communication skills and fostering dependency but they also expressed a desire to learn more about how to use ChatGPT in their teaching. Students had a balanced view, recognizing its utility for very specific tasks but understanding its limitations with more complex tasks. Both groups expressed distrust in ChatGPT-generated content due to inaccuracies. Despite these concerns there was a consensus on the inevitability of ChatGPT's integration into education. This study discussed the importance of developing guidelines and providing training for educators on how to effectively implement ChatGPT into academic settings for healthcare fields.