Before you begin — about this guide

— Making clinical work, teaching and publishing a little lighter —

What this guide is for

Since ChatGPT arrived in 2022, generative AI has spread through society at remarkable speed. Among therapists — physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, judo therapists, acupuncturists and the rest of the professions that gather under that word — the same questions keep surfacing:

• "Can AI actually be used in the clinic?"
• "Will there still be work for therapists?"
• "Where do I start?"
• "What about personal information and security?"

At the same time, there is still very little systematic guidance on generative AI written for this field. This guide is a set of foundations meant to help you take the first step. Rather than explaining difficult technology or jargon, it gathers, as practically as it can, what you need in order to reach:

"Tomorrow, in the clinic, in teaching, in what I publish, things are a little lighter than today."

What you should come away with

• An understanding, from a clinician's point of view, of what generative AI is good at and bad at
• A sense of how ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude differ from one another
• Concrete prompt patterns for patient explanations, handouts, study groups and publishing
• The ability to work a level up: file uploads, role setting, and the rest
• The idea of building an AI that belongs to you or your clinic, using GPTs and Gems
• A realistic distance to keep on personal information and security
• A way of thinking about what a therapist is for in the age of AI

Who this is written for

This guide assumes a reader who is somewhere in the following:

• A therapist who is curious about generative AI but has not touched it, or has only dabbled
• Someone who has started using ChatGPT but does not feel it is helping their work yet
• Someone who studies, publishes or teaches alongside their clinical work
• Someone losing hours to slides for in-house study groups or handouts for patients
• Someone held back by worries about personal information and security
• Someone thinking about where their career and expertise sit in an age of AI

Conversely, if you have already built generative AI deeply into your work and are comfortable with APIs and code, this will feel basic. It is meant as a first map, nothing more.

How to read it

• Read from Part 1 in order, or dip into whichever chapter interests you.
• Each chapter ends with a summary and concrete prompt examples. Copy them straight into ChatGPT or Gemini and try them.
• Please actually touch the tools as you read. Generative AI is not something to read about; it is something to run.
• The screens and features described here are as of the time of writing. AI moves quickly, so details will change. The underlying way of thinking changes far more slowly.

How it is organised

The guide has two parts and a closing chapter.

• Part 1 | Meeting generative AI What generative AI is, what it is good and bad at, and how to start touching it. Chapters that lower the first hurdle.

• Part 2 | Putting it to work Role setting, context, file uploads, prompt technique, data analysis, making materials, and GPTs and Gems. Chapters you can use tomorrow.

• Closing chapter | The therapist in an age of AI What a therapist is for, and what cannot be replaced.