Offcall Physician Spotlight: Meet Dr. Dennis Ren

Offcall Team

Have a response for Dr. Ren? Reply to this post directly — he’ll personally read every message. Also, let us know who we should feature next by replying directly to this post!

Sign up for our newsletter

On/Offcall is the weekly dose of information and inspiration that every physician needs.

1. Dennis, what's one task you've fully handed off to AI that you'd never take back? A lot of my work is in medical education, specifically Free Open Access Medical Education, where I create podcasts and blog posts. I use AI to create the first draft based on templates and my prior writing samples. I still review and edit everything. I own the judgment, the message, and the final voice. But, I no longer feel the need to personally create the first rough draft. Instead of spending energy getting words onto the page, I spend more time refining the ideas, making the language more human, checking accuracy, and making sure the final product actually sounds like me.

2. Are you worried about deskilling — that the next generation won't develop the intuition you did because the model handled it? I think “deskilling” can become a slippery slope argument. New tools can change what skills matter and how skills evolve. People worried handheld calculators would mean students would stop learning math, but that is not what happened. We still teach math. The emphasis shifted from manual calculation and toward understanding, problem-solving, and application. I think AI is similar. We already use many "external brains": checklists, clinical pathways, dosing references, clinical decision tools, etc. AI is another tool in that ecosystem.

The key is knowing what cannot be outsourced. If a patient is in cardiac arrest, you need to recognize it and start compressions. If you need AI to tell you to do that, that's problematic. But for other tasks, the skill is shifting: asking better questions, interpreting outputs, catching errors, and applying judgment. So I do not see this as simply deskilling. I see it as a changing skillset.

3. If you could redesign residency from scratch, what's the first thing you'd change? I would make science communication a core part of residency training (ideally starting even in the medical school curriculum). We spend years teaching trainees how to diagnose, treat, and conduct research. We spend far less time teaching them how to explain that research clearly to patients, families, colleagues, and the public. I love the quote from Sir Mark Walport, “Science is not finished until it’s communicated.”

We can't just do the research and call it good. We need to help people understand it, trust it, and apply it. That includes explaining uncertainty, correcting misleading information without being dismissive, and translating complex evidence into plain language.

Thanks for the spotlight nomination, Dr. Ioannis Koutroulis! Interested in nominating someone for the next Physician Spotlight? Let us know (contact@offcall.com)!