AI in the counselling room

What we covered

• How growing up walking hospital hallways beside his chaplain-and-bulldozer-driver father shaped Charles's sense of what "compassion at work" looks like.
• The difference between compassion and competence in healthcare work, and why quiet quitting shows up as one without the other.
• What Charles sees as the biggest misconception about people facing grief, suicidal thoughts, or mental health crises — especially men.
• How virtual counseling let Charles reach people doing significant grief work thousands of miles apart during COVID.
• Where Charles actually uses AI in his own pastoral counseling practice, and where he draws the line.
• His answer to healthcare workers who say flatly, "there's no place for AI in this business."

Moments worth your time

• The hospital hallway story. Charles describes trailing his father, a Methodist minister and bulldozer driver, through Mammoth Medical Center as a seven-year-old: "I saw compassion at work."
• Naming the two tracks. On what separates healthcare workers who thrive from those on autopilot: "Competence is doing your job well... but you can't check out on the heart."
• The note-taking example. Charles walks through exactly how he uses an AI notetaker mid-session with someone in crisis, without losing eye contact or presence — "it directly helps the bottom line person who needs that help."
• The pushback he'd give a skeptic. Rather than argue, Charles asks one question first: "Are you open to considering another perspective?"

In their words

"I saw compassion at work."

"AI among many other tools becomes a means and not an end."

"Life is so much better when we give to others and not just to ourselves."

Who should watch this

If you're a clinician, chaplain, or healthcare leader who's been told AI and "people's business" can't coexist, this episode is your counterargument built from the inside. If you're weighing whether a note-taking or documentation tool would help you stay present with patients instead of pulling you away from them, Charles walks through exactly how that decision looks in practice — including the ethical line he won't cross.

Put it to work

Before your next 3 patient or client sessions this week, write down one moment in each where you had to choose between staying present and capturing what was said. After the third session, look at the pattern: is documentation costing you presence in a way a governed, ethical AI notetaker could recover? That's your answer to whether this is worth exploring further.

If that's the tension you're sitting with — wanting the efficiency without losing the ethics or the eye contact — that's exactly what we work through together in a live, hands-on session: book a Doctor ChatGPT session built around governed, ethical use from the first minute.