Physicians & LLMs: LLM adoption qualitative research

The PLOS ONE protocol (published August 7, 2026) specifies a descriptive qualitative study that will use semi-structured interviews and the TAB framework to explore how family physicians perceive LLM adoption in clinical practice, and the protocol aims to inform policy and practice. According to PLOS ONE, the study will purposively sample physicians in British Columbia and use thematic analysis with both deductive and inductive coding.

• The PLOS ONE protocol was published on August 7, 2026 and lists received and accepted dates of July 18, 2025 and July 22, 2026 respectively, establishing the timeline of peer review and revision.
• The study plans recruitment from August 1, 2025 to January 31, 2026, a six-month window described in the protocol, with final analysis expected within a year of data collection starting, per PLOS ONE.
• The protocol defines usage strata for LLM experience as 50+ (frequent), 5–50 (occasional), and fewer than 5 uses (nearly no use) in clinicians’ lifetime in clinical contexts, as specified by Pokharel et al. in PLOS ONE.
• The protocol cites Canada-wide primary care access data showing patients without a family doctor rose from 4.5 million in 2019 to about 6.5 million in 2023, framing why primary care settings matter for LLM adoption, according to PLOS ONE.

The PLOS ONE protocol directly answers who, what, when, and how: it is a qualitative descriptive study to interview family physicians in British Columbia about LLM adoption using the Technology Adoption Behavior (TAB) framework, according to Pokharel et al. (PLOS ONE, published August 7, 2026).

According to PLOS ONE, the study will purposively sample physicians across three LLM-use strata (50+, 5–50, <5 lifetime clinical uses) and vary years in practice to reach analytic sufficiency, with recruitment through physician organizations and snowball sampling.

According to Pokharel et al. in PLOS ONE, interviews will be semi-structured, recorded, transcribed verbatim, deidentified, and analyzed with NVivo using deductive codes derived from TAB plus inductive refinement.

According to the protocol in PLOS ONE, reflexive memos and multidisciplinary team discussions are built into the analysis plan to reduce bias and to iteratively refine themes.

The protocol implies that qualitative teams should combine theory-driven and inductive coding to study emerging technologies, according to PLOS ONE.

• Researchers should preregister a coding framework like TAB and plan a hybrid deductive–inductive approach to preserve comparability while capturing novel themes, as recommended in the PLOS ONE protocol.
• Interview teams should collect clear context on participants’ LLM experience using numeric thresholds (e.g., 50+, 5–50, <5), because Pokharel et al. (PLOS ONE) argue these strata improve analytical comparisons.
• Policy-focused dissemination matters: Pokharel et al. state the study will target peer-reviewed journals, professional organizations, and policymaker briefings to influence safe technology integration.

The PLOS ONE protocol by Pokharel et al. (published August 7, 2026) provides a clear, theory-informed plan to study primary care physicians’ perceptions of LLM adoption using semi-structured interviews and the TAB framework.

Researchers replicating or extending this work should preregister TAB-aligned codes, capture numeric experience strata, and plan reflexive team processes as specified in the protocol.

AI-enabled qualitative tools can accelerate the steps the protocol outlines, from transcription to cross-segment thematic matrices, while preserving human interpretation.

If you want to run TAB-guided interview studies faster and produce reproducible thematic and cross-segment analyses, Try Evidano for free.