Evaluating the Performance of Large Language Models on Palliative Care Test Questions: A Mixed Methods Study.

Background: Little is known about large language model (LLM) performance on palliative care (PC)-related knowledge-based tasks. We evaluated two LLMs in answering PC-related test questions and explaining their answer choice rationale. Methods: LLMs were prompted to answer 25 randomly selected questi...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Journal of Palliative Medicine Vol. 29; no. 9; pp. 1282 - 1287
Autores principales: Chua, Isaac S., Lo, Yen-Ting, Liu, David, Succi, Marc D., Zhang, Mark, Yeh, Jonathan, Skarf, Lara M., Doyle, Kathleen, Gundersen, Daniel A., Mazzola, Emanuele, Bates, David W.
Formato: research tables/charts Journal Article
Publicado: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Sep2026
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:Background: Little is known about large language model (LLM) performance on palliative care (PC)-related knowledge-based tasks. We evaluated two LLMs in answering PC-related test questions and explaining their answer choice rationale. Methods: LLMs were prompted to answer 25 randomly selected questions from the Fast Facts Quiz and provide their answer choice rationale. Three PC educators ranked and rated LLM-generated answer choice explanations versus the test's answer key explanations. Linear fixed-effect models evaluated reviewer ranking, and ordinal logistic regression evaluated reviewer ratings of quality, suitability, accuracy, relevance, and comprehensiveness. Results: Both LLMs answered 96% of selected questions correctly. Reviewers rated LLM-generated explanations more highly than Fast Facts Quiz explanations. Five themes emerged from reviewer comments: perceived inaccuracies, clarity of writing, educational value, linguistic style, and miscellaneous. Conclusions: LLMs demonstrated high answer choice accuracy and generated preferable answer explanations when compared to the Fast Facts Quiz answer key.