America Has Just Been Told to Learn AI. Here’s What That Means for ObGyns. And Their Patients.
At the end of 2025, the U.S. Department of Labor issued Training and Employment Guidance Letter 03-25 — a directive encouraging state and local workforce systems to use federal funding to teach Americans artificial intelligence skills. The letter was prompted by Executive Order 14277, and it lays out a framework for AI literacy that applies across every industry.
Read more about “The Future of ObGyn Intelligence HERE
The DOL’s framework identifies five foundational content areas: understanding how AI works, exploring its uses, prompting it effectively, evaluating its outputs, and using it responsibly. It also updated its Building Blocks competency model to include skills like assessing AI-generated content for accuracy, using effective prompting techniques, and adhering to policies on appropriate AI use.
This is a workforce-wide directive. It is not specific to medicine. But the principles map directly onto what physicians need — and the gaps are exactly where we get into trouble
Here are seven guidelines for how ObGyns should think about AI literacy, built on the DOL’s framework but translated into language and practice that matters for our specialty. For each I have added what it means to ObGyns and what it means for patients.
It is an essential document for every ObGyn and patient to understand how important it is to address and learn about AI in ObGyn.
1. Understand What AI Actually Does — and What It Doesn’t
2. Learn AI Through ObGyn-Specific Tasks, Not Generic Tutorials
3. Treat Prompting as a Clinical Skill
4. Verify Everything
5. Protect Patient Data and Disclose AI Use
6. Build Oversight Capacity — This Isn’t Just an Individual Skill
7. Teach Principles, Not Platforms
Over the next few weeks we’ll send out a newsletter for each of these as a learning-like course.
Below, I am exploring how to address each of these principles. If you are serious about learning AI, and especially as ObGyn or patient, this is where you should start.
This kind of independent, evidence-based analysis takes time to produce and isn’t funded by industry or institutions. If you find it valuable, a paid subscription keeps it going.
