Explain procedures and discuss test results or prescribed treatments with patients.

“Explain procedures and discuss test results or prescribed treatments with patients.” is a core task performed by General Internal Medicine Physicians. Among the occupation's 19 rated tasks, workers place it 14th by importance (#6 most important). About 100% of workers say it is relevant to their job.

This is a single occupation-specific task statement from O*NET. The figures below describe how central the task is to the job and what independent studies measure about AI and this kind of work — not a prediction that the task will be automated.

Work activities this task rolls up to

O*NET groups concrete tasks into broader work activities shared across many occupations.

• Explain medical information to patients or family members. in Interpreting the Meaning of Information for Others

AI exposure

The OpenAI / Eloundou “GPTs are GPTs” study rates this task E2. Exposure with tools — software built on top of a language model (not the model alone) could cut the time by at least half.

Exposure measures whether a model could meaningfully speed the task up — it is an estimate of overlap with model capabilities, not a measure of whether the work will be done by software. The study's intermediate score (β) for this task is 0.50. Automation potential label: T1.

How AI is actually used on this kind of task

The Anthropic Economic Index observes how people actually use AI on tasks like this one across millions of real conversations.

• 0.016% share of AI-use records mapped to this task
• 11% of that use is work-related
• Most common interaction: learning
• Average autonomy of the AI: 3.2 (1–5; higher = more autonomous)
• 96% of interactions still needed a human in the loop

Observed AI use describes people choosing to use AI as a tool on this kind of task today. It is augmentation and assistance, not a measure of jobs replaced.

Working with AI vs. handing it off

Of the AI conversations mapped to this task, the split between people working alongside AI and people delegating the task to it.

How people interact with AI on this task

Other tasks in this occupation

• Analyze records, reports, test results, or examination information to diagnose medical condition of patient. · importance 4.5
• Treat internal disorders, such as hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, or problems of the lung, brain, kidney, or gastrointestinal tract. · importance 4.5
• Prescribe or administer medication, therapy, and other specialized medical care to treat or prevent illness, disease, or injury. · importance 4.5
• Manage and treat common health problems, such as infections, influenza or pneumonia, as well as serious, chronic, and complex illnesses, in adolescents, adults, and the elderly. · importance 4.5
• Provide and manage long-term, comprehensive medical care, including diagnosis and nonsurgical treatment of diseases, for adult patients in an office or hospital. · importance 4.4
• Advise patients and community members concerning diet, activity, hygiene, and disease prevention. · importance 4.4
• Make diagnoses when different illnesses occur together or in situations where the diagnosis may be obscure. · importance 4.3
• Refer patient to medical specialist or other practitioner when necessary. · importance 4.3
• Monitor patients' conditions and progress and reevaluate treatments as necessary. · importance 4.3
• Collect, record, and maintain patient information, such as medical history, reports, or examination results. · importance 4.2
• Provide consulting services to other doctors caring for patients with special or difficult problems. · importance 4.1
• Advise surgeon of a patient's risk status and recommend appropriate intervention to minimize risk. · importance 4.1
• Immunize patients to protect them from preventable diseases. · importance 4.0
• Direct and coordinate activities of nurses, students, assistants, specialists, therapists, and other medical staff. · importance 3.8

See all tasks on the General Internal Medicine Physicians page.

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

• O*NET 30.3 U.S. Department of Labor / National Center for O*NET Development
• Anthropic Economic Index v4 (2026-01-15) + v2 (2025-03-27) Anthropic
• “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130 OpenAI / academic

Data compiled June 2, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

@misc{singulariki-task-7793,
  title  = {Explain procedures and discuss test results or prescribed treatments with patients.},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; Anthropic Economic Index v4 (2026-01-15) + v2 (2025-03-27); “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/tasks/task-7793}
}