Building a Weekly AI Workflow as a Surgeon

One tool per week beats ten bookmarks

Surgeons do not need another roundup of fifty apps. You need one workflow that survives call, OR days, and research evenings. The Digital Curbside rule is deliberate: one tool, one honest deep-dive, every week.

Pick a recurring pain point

Good candidates: scanning new journal issues, drafting IRB language, summarizing a paper for journal club, organizing collaborator tasks, or turning a clinic question into a structured note.

Bad candidates: anything that requires perfect data hygiene you do not have, or that inserts itself between you and a critical patient decision without oversight.

• Choose a pain that repeats at least weekly.
• Prefer tasks where errors are catchable before they reach patients.
• Write the before/after time estimate honestly.

Template the prompt once

If you re-invent the prompt every time, you will abandon the tool. Save a short template with your specialty, preferred output format, and explicit instructions to cite uncertainty.

Then keep the human step: you remain responsible for verifying anything that could change care or publication claims.

Share the workflow, not just the tool

Adoption sticks when a colleague can copy your habit. Document the job, the template, the failure modes, and when not to use the tool. That is the curbside consult you wish someone had handed you.