Using ChatGPT To Create Efficiencies In Your Veterinary Practice

1. Use ChatGPT To Help You Write Your Employee Handbook

Nothing triggers writer's block like a big project. ChatGPT can help you break down large tasks such as writing standard operating procedures and compiling your employee handbook. Provide specific information in your prompt to shape the end result, including key policies like tardiness, sick days, no shows, breaks and lunch, and dress code. Consider covering performance expectations and essential qualities such as community, inclusivity, and generosity.

2. Ask ChatGPT To Create a Staff Survey or Skills Assessment

ChatGPT can help you measure your team's mood, motivation, and competency by creating staff surveys and assessment tools. For best results, copy and paste existing survey information into your prompt or enter ideas for potential questions. For example, "Write a surgical skills assessment for veterinary technicians''.

ChatGPT can also help you generate survey questions to elicit specific responses. If you want to identify team members who may be struggling with burnout, ask ChatGPT to create a question that allows you to learn if the respondent is dissatisfied with their job or experiencing depression. Review and modify your ChatGPT results to ensure the suggested question uses sensitive and unbiased language.

3. Create Client Communication Templates

ChatGPT can help you compose client communication templates for emails, texts, and email newsletters. Generate the most relevant results by providing the following:

• Your goal: This might be to get clients to book an appointment or notify clients their pet is heartworm negative.
• Context: What kind of practice are you? If you're a small animal hospital focusing on preventive veterinary care or if you offer after-hours urgent care, this information can let ChatGPT what to include in its output.
• Other specific details: Include what else you're trying to communicate. This could be that you're offering free nail trims after booking online or the importance of year-round preventives.

Alternatively, you can ask ChatGPT to refresh your current client communications by copying and pasting current templates and prompting the AI to rewrite the material with a new tone and readability level or to summarize the content into a text message.

Once you've edited the results to reflect your brand voice and made any necessary changes, import the templates into your practice management software for automated communications.

4. Simplify Complex Concepts For Client Educational Materials

Effective client handouts and instructions should be clear, readable, and easy to understand. Unfortunately, veterinary professionals can struggle to break down complex concepts without oversimplifying the subject or omitting important details. ChatGPT can help you strike the balance between complexity and comprehension when you prompt it to write about a topic using a specific reading or academic level. Prompts might be: "Write a how-to guide for diabetic pet management using an eighth-grade reading level," or "Explain how laser therapy works and its advantages for dogs and cats using a sixth-grade reading level."

5. Brainstorm New Social Media Content Ideas

Are you tired of staring at a blank screen or asking your team what you should post on your practice's social media channels? Leverage ChatGPT to improve your online presence and build engagement with your brand. ChatGPT can:

• Generate clever captions for those adorable patient pictures your team takes around the practice (as long as you describe them first).
• Provide fresh ideas for attracting new followers.
• Write posts that communicate your brand's core values.
• Turn old content from your newsletter, blog, or staff bulletin board into new and exciting social media content, including image suggestions.

Make the most of your time by asking ChatGPT to create several content pieces around a specific theme such as National Veterinary Technician Week or Pet Dental Health Month. Or, ask ChatGPT to design your content calendar around specific topics or important dates so you know what to post and when.

ChatGPT Best Practices

ChatGPT and similar AI tools can be an asset to busy veterinary professionals, but, like all evolving technology, they must be used with care and caution. When it comes to how to use ChatGPT in your practice, keep the following points in mind:

• Protect yourself from accidental plagiarism: Never use AI-generated content without modifying it to fit your needs.
• Don't enter confidential information: ChatGPT is a form of open AI meaning anything inputted into it is available publically. Don't put any information in there that you wouldn't want accessed outside your practice.
• Check the tone, language, and accuracy: ChatGPT-produced content can sound artificial and cold or contain errors, biases, and assumptions. Always proofread your results to ensure the content is aligned with your brand and goal.
• Provide specific prompts for specific results: The more information you provide in your prompt, the more successful ChatGPT will be in creating suitable content.
• Refine your results with a new prompt: Depending on your query, it may take several rounds of prompts before ChatGPT produces a suitable result.

Modern veterinary teams should consider using technological advantages such as ChatGPT to speed up and automate time-consuming communications-based tasks so they can maintain sustainable work habits and focus on delivering exceptional patient and client care.