AI Integration in Undergraduate Medical Education: A Qualitative Study of Faculty Perspectives in the UAE (Preprint)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: AI is transforming health care, creating an imperative to integrate AI into medical education. While student perspectives are well-studied, faculty views, particularly in non-Western contexts, remain underexplored. Objective: This qualitative study explores the perspectives of 10 medical faculty members from 2 institutions in the United Arab Emirates on integrating AI into undergraduate medical education. Methods: This multi-institutional qualitative study used purposive and reflexive sampling to recruit faculty from both public and private medical universities in the United Arab Emirates. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 10 faculty members involved in curriculum design, teaching, or assessment. Data collection followed COREQ (Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research) guidelines. Data were analyzed using a mixed inductive-deductive approach guided by the thematic analysis framework of Braun and Clarke. Findings were interpreted using the FACETS (Form, AI Use Case, Context, Education, Technology, and SAMR: Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition) framework, which supported a structured examination of AI integration across different dimensions of teaching and learning. Results: Faculty primarily used generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, for content creation, assessment development, and teaching support, reflecting a preference for accessible and general-purpose technologies. AI was mainly used to enhance teaching efficiency and support student learning, including personalized study planning and practice activities. Its application extended across preclinical and clinical contexts, with strong emphasis on adapting content to local cultural and ethical norms. While AI was perceived to improve efficiency and alignment between teaching and assessment, concerns were raised regarding equity, overreliance, and variability in student use. Overall, adoption remained focused on enhancing existing practices, with limited transformative use but recognition of future potential for more advanced applications. Conclusions: The UAE medical faculty demonstrate cautious optimism toward AI integration, recognizing its potential to enhance educational efficiency and personalization while emphasizing the critical importance of cultural contextualization. Current implementation remains at early adoption stages, focused on enhancement rather than transformation. Successful integration requires faculty development, context-sensitive policies, and equitable implementation strategies that address both technological and sociocultural dimensions of AI adoption in medical education.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.026 | 0.044 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.019 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".