Offcall Physician Spotlight: Meet Dr. Manijeh Berenji

Offcall Team

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1. Manijeh, do you think AI will solve the physician shortage or quietly make it worse?

No amount of AI/robots will make that inherent need for human interaction go away. In fact, medicine needs to be doubling-down on human-design interaction!

2. If you could redesign residency from scratch, what's the first thing you'd change?

We need to fundamentally reimagine medicine with patient simulations from day one — we are teaching 20th century style!

3. Independent practice in 2026 — endangered species or quiet comeback?

I predict it is going to come back because of patients' need for real connection with their doctor — not a doc-in-a-box.

4. What's something physicians are quietly worried about that the public doesn't know about yet?

That physicians are not valued as they were in society.

5. Are you worried about deskilling — that the next generation won't develop the intuition you did because the model handled it?

I had been initially, but over the last few years, I have seen a new skill come in its place: AI "in"skilling — being able to decipher the AI output, using one's fundamental knowledge about the subject to distill through all the noise and get to the core essence of the subject at hand.

6. If you had a magic wand for one thing in medicine — not your whole career, just one thing — what would you fix tomorrow?

End prior auth!