AI in Healthcare: Identity Threat or Opportunity? Insights From Medical Specialists

Abstract

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has gradually permeated the medical sector, bringing about multifaceted changes in healthcare practices. Existing studies demonstrate significant gains of AI for clinical application in terms of performance and innovation. While this literature largely emphasizes technological advancements, it often overlooks AI’s human and professional implications. AI may not replace humans in the near future due to ethical, legal, and technical constraints, but it is already reshaping work practices as well as professional and institutional dynamics in ways that remain underexplored. This paper addresses this gap by focusing on physicians in hospital-based settings, where AI tools are already shaping clinical routines and professional roles. We therefore use a qualitative approach, conducting semi-structured interviews with 19 physicians from diverse specializations in Belgium, who use AI for clinical purposes. The analysis of the interviews, using the framework of identity work to explore how physicians make sense of their professional identity and legitimize their work in relation to AI, reveals the persistent tension between compliance and resistance. AI tools, even when having the potential to serve as substitutes, appear to be primarily used as complementary aids. Physicians often regard them as a second opinion, one they do not hesitate to override, rather than trusting them for decision-making. These findings are key to reassessing physicians’ autonomy and agency in relation to AI, elucidating the processes by which physicians constantly negotiate their identity amid growing AI adoption.