Phase 1 · Win 10 minutes

Twelve things you can already do

Phase 1 wrap-up · No video · Inventory, principles and access to the review

Marta works at the computer at the end of the day, with Roble the cat asleep beside her.

This series began at 20:10. Marta was alone in the office, with six patient records from the afternoon still half-written and an hour and a half of work ahead of her—time that was not coming out of her diary, but out of her life.

Twelve Pills later, that hour is still the measure. The work has not disappeared. What has changed is how much of that work starts from a blank page—which is where the time really goes.

Pill 1.12 already brought the phase to a close. This is not another ending: it is the check before the next phase begins. It is an inventory of what you can do today, without installing anything, and a way to find out whether it has really stuck.

1 · Stop writing from scratch

1.1 · Dictate the patient record; do not type it. Speak for thirty seconds and, after reviewing it, you have a patient record organised into sections, with [PENDING] wherever you did not provide any information. The whole workflow takes under three minutes per patient. What you gain is not typing speed: it is not having to reconstruct the consultation from memory late at night.

1.2 · The difficult email, without wrestling with a blank page. The email you have been avoiding all morning is drafted in a minute because you explain what happened, what you want to achieve and what tone you need. It gives you a starting point; you adjust it to the practice’s voice.

1.3 · Explain it clearly to the pet owner. Reduce the jargon without reducing the rigour. Being right is not enough if the pet owner got stuck on the word ‘creatinine’.

2 · Read less and understand more

1.6 · Summarise the guidance; check the important points yourself. Thirty-one pages in ten minutes, yes—but the detail that determines the decision (the deadline, the amount, the requirement) must be checked in the original. Always. Without exception.

1.7 · Explain it as if I knew nothing about it. The dangerous word is not the one you do not understand: it is the one you think you understand. Right of use sounds as though someone is giving you something. Ask about the three terms you read without slowing down—and remember that understanding the term does not decide whether the deal suits you: your figures, your adviser and your signature decide that.

3 · Make sure nothing slips through

1.4 · Ask what you might be missing. Before doing the task, ask for a list of what you had not considered. You cross things off, you add what is missing, and you decide. It is the cheapest technique in the entire phase and the one that prevents the most unpleasant surprises.

1.9 · Make sure it does not look like a first attempt. Do not give it examples to copy: give it your material—your patient records, your notes—and ask it to distil that material for you. What was in your head or scattered across hundreds of notes is at your fingertips in five minutes.

4 · Make it understandable outside the consulting room

1.8 · ‘Is that really necessary?’ Do not defend the price: explain the value, and anchor it in the animal rather than your equipment. Ask it to ‘convince them’ and you get a salesperson. Ask it to ‘explain why’ and you get someone who cares.

1.10 · The discharge instructions that do not trigger three phone calls. Keep the raw material separate from the template: take the notes you already have and define the sections, order and gaps yourself. Then add the two rules that make the technique safe: anything missing must appear as [PENDING], and it must include nothing you have not supplied. What was said in the consulting room does not travel home; the document does.

At home, an owner reviews a document beside his dog, who is wearing an Elizabethan collar; medication and food are on the table.

5 · Save it, so you do not have to repeat it

1.5 · Stop starting from scratch: your first assistant. A method that works should not be rebuilt; it should be saved. Setting it up takes a few minutes the first time. From then on, you paste in the details, review the result and act. The work does not disappear; the set-up does.

1.11 · Discharge instructions that begin on your own headed paper. The template stops being something you must remember to paste in and becomes the place where the work happens. Always work on a copy, with your letterhead, street address and telephone number beyond its reach. (Working inside the document itself requires a paid plan; the same document can be produced for free with twenty seconds of copying and pasting.)

1.12 · Tell it who you work with. Set the context once—which practice this is, who may be writing from that account and who each text is for—and stop explaining it in every conversation. Then review what it remembers and what you have shared: more context does not mean less checking.

Four members of the El Roble team work at computers inside the practice.

The four principles that stay with you

Techniques grow old. These four principles do not. They are not another checklist: they are how you decide to use everything above. If you take only one thing away from the whole phase, let it be this section.

It drafts; you sign. The tool gives you a starting point. You provide the tone, judgement and signature. That final minute is not an administrative formality: it is the whole Pill.

Watch for what it adds. This is the error that has appeared most often across these twelve Pills, and the hardest one to spot: not inventing what you asked for, but assuming something you did not say. ‘To be confirmed’ becomes ‘confirmed’. A treatment instruction that nobody prescribed. A percentage that sounds plausible. Read for what should not be there, not only for what is missing.

Ask whether that detail is necessary. The useful question is not ‘Is this tool secure?’, but ‘Do I need the pet owner’s name, telephone number and address for what I am asking?’ Almost never. Once information leaves your system, it is no longer under your control.

Clinical decisions are yours. Organising, documenting, translating, summarising and drafting: yes. Interpreting in context, repeating a test, referring, treating or waiting: no. Those are clinical acts, and a registered veterinary surgeon must take responsibility for them.

What we are not going to claim

That El Roble now finishes on time. That is not true yet.

What has happened is smaller and more real: the end of the day has sometimes moved forwards. Some afternoons Marta leaves earlier and some afternoons she does not. Sara no longer spends half the morning on an email. Hugo sends home a document that answers the three questions that used to end up on the emergency mobile. Diego saved a method and has not had to rebuild it.

It is not an entire afternoon reclaimed. It is twelve pockets of time. That is exactly what Phase 1 is about: proving to yourself that those pockets exist, so that what comes next is worth your while.

El Roble’s empty team room at closing time, with an open laptop on the table. — El Roble’s team room, empty at closing time, with an open laptop on the table.

The review

Before moving on to Phase 2, there is a review made up of fifteen situations: cases from El Roble in which you decide what you would do. It is not a memory exam and you can repeat it as often as needed.

All twelve Phase 1 micro-lessons must be marked as completed before you can start.
You pass with 12 out of 15 and at least 2 correct answers among questions 13, 14 and 15—data, clinical decisions and sign-off.
Attempts are unlimited, with no penalty or waiting period.
Passing unlocks Phase 2 and gives you a shareable badge and a simple learning summary in your name.

The badge and summary may form part of the practice’s internal learning record. They are not a diploma, qualification, accreditation or official certification, and they do not by themselves demonstrate compliance with the AI Regulation. The diploma is reserved for completion of the full course.

Since February 2025, Article 4 of the European AI Act has required providers and deployers to take measures that support the AI literacy of the people using these systems under their authority, taking the context into account. The European Commission explains that organisations may keep internal records of training and other measures. This phase can contribute to that record; it does not replace it or guarantee a legal outcome on its own.

Before starting, open and mark as completed any Pills that are still pending. Phase 2 builds on those twelve foundations.

What comes next

Phase 2 is called ‘It does more than write’.

You have already spoken to it and given it documents. But you spoke so that it could transcribe, and you gave it documents so that it could summarise: in both cases, you supplied something and it returned something.

From this point onwards, it answers you. You speak to it and it asks follow-up questions about what you had not yet organised. You show it a photograph and it tells you what it sees. You give it your own material and it answers with the source in front of you, so that you can check it.

That is precisely why the measure changes. Phase 1 was measured in minutes gained. Phase 2 is measured in minutes not lost: the error that did not slip through, the call you did not have to return, the detail that did not leave the practice.

See you on the road.

Nothing that happens at El Roble Veterinary Practice happened in real life: the practice and its team are fictional. Everything else is real—the tools, the results you will see in the videos and the mistakes the tools make.