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. 2025 Oct 28;25(1):1512.
doi: 10.1186/s12909-025-07992-0.

Use of and confidence in YouTube and ChatGPT in surgical teaching and training

Stefan Tajsic  1 , Imre Stjern-Vik  2 , Dana Meknas  3   2 , Martin Harbitz Bruusgaard  4
Affiliations

Use of and confidence in YouTube and ChatGPT in surgical teaching and training

Stefan Tajsic et al. BMC Med Educ. .

Abstract

Background: Today, YouTube and ChatGPT are used for a wide variety of purposes, ranging from entertainment to complex teaching. The content needs neither external approval nor quality assurance. We investigated how often doctors used YouTube and ChatGPT, how widespread their use was and the degree of confidence doctors had in these resources for teaching and training surgical procedures.

Methods: In November 2023, we conducted a survey among doctors working in all the surgical departments of the University Hospital of North Norway, Tromsø. The questionnaire assessed use of and confidence in YouTube and ChatGPT and background data. For our analysis, we used frequency tables and association analysis. The study formed the basis for the second-year thesis of the first authors.

Results: Out of a total of 152 doctors, 96 participated. Among the participants, 97% used YouTube and 14% used ChatGPT for teaching or training. There was no significant correlation between work experience and use (YouTube: p = 0.14, ChatGPT: p = 0.88). YouTube was used every month by 48%, while 2% used ChatGPT monthly. 60% of the doctors had a medium level of confidence that the content of YouTube was consistent with Norwegian procedures and standards, while 69% had low confidence in this aspect for ChatGPT.

Conclusions: In November 2023, there was frequent and widespread use of YouTube to teach and train surgical procedures. The ChatGPT language model was rarely used, and the doctors had low confidence in its content. The future use of online learning platforms, language models and artificial intelligence for surgery training has an uncertain potential that warrants further research.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence; ChatGPT; Medical education; Surgical training; YouTube.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics approval and consent to participate: The survey was voluntary, anonymous and did not contain personally identifiable data. All participants provided informed consent to use their data in research and publication. To ensure privacy, the study was reported to the Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research (SIKT), which approved its application for data processing and storage before the study commenced (Ref. No. 759254). This study was conducted in accordance with the ethical principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki. The dataset can be made available on reasonable request to the main authors. We declare no competing interests. Funding for this project was provided by the Norwegian Centre for Rural Medicine. All authors contributed to the design, analysis and writing of the scientific paper. The first authors conducted the data collection. We would like to thank Paul Farmer for perspective language editing and the Norwegian Centre for Rural Medicine for enabling this study. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

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