On/Offcall: Here's What Doctors Get Wrong About AI in Healthcare

Dr. Robert Wachter is an absolute legend in healthcare. As the Chair of Medicine at UCSF and a true pioneer in patient safety and digital innovation, he’s spent decades shaping how technology, policy, and clinical care intersect in the real world.

This week, we were honored to welcome Dr. Wachter to How I Doctor for a wide-ranging conversation with Offcall co-founder Dr. Graham Walker about how AI is transforming medicine. 👏Dr. Wachter’s new book A Giant Leap is about to hit shelves and it’s all about how AI will fundamentally transform healthcare (pre-order it here!). He’s convinced AI won’t replace doctors, but he’s equally convinced that it will force medicine to reckon with what humans should actually be doing, what machines might do better, and how we can redesign care without losing judgment, trust, or humanity.

From clinical decision support to de-skilling and documentation to trust, he and Graham dive first into every hot topic of how AI is reshaping the physician workforce, including:

🧠 How AI is already changing decision-making, documentation, and medical education
⚠️ Why “de-skilling” isn’t always bad, but blind trust in tech is
⏳ How the system’s dysfunction created an opening for AI that we can’t ignore
🛑 What it will take to adopt AI tools without losing clinical judgment, professional identity, or human connection

Out now! Listen to the full episode on Offcall

Also see Graham’s post with his own personal takeaways from the conversation and drop him a comment on social media with your reaction to the episode here.

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