Patient Satisfaction in Telemedicine During COVID-19 Pandemic

by - March 09, 2021

During this COVID-19 pandemic a lot changes have occurred and new innovations have been implemented. In healthcare, one of the most noticeable innovations during this pandemic is the rise of Telemedicine all over the world. According to the World Health Organization (2020), telemedicine is the delivery of healthcare services by the healthcare professionals that uses technologies to exchange information for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Telemedicine is widely used nowadays because most people are restricted to go outside to prevent acquiring the COVID-19 virus. It is very crucial to visit the hospital in this time of pandemic because we would not know what disease we might acquire. With that, a transition from in-person to video consultation is being practiced by different hospital institutions for patient’s safety and practicality.

Even if we are new to this kind of set-up, this transition in healthcare still shows patients satisfactory. According to the study of Magadmi, M., Kamel, and Magadmi, R. (2020), patients in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia are generally satisfied with the implementation of teleconsultation because the doctors were able to provide them a management plan, they were able to understand their condition more, and they don’t have to physically visit the hospital that may put them to have a high risk of potential exposure to COVID-19 virus. However, this study also cited that patient dissatisfaction seems to increase with teleconsultation if the patient still needs to have physical visit despite having teleconsultation maybe because the patients have these perceptions that what is the use of teleconsultation if they still need to go and see the doctors physically. In addition, according to Ramaswamy et al. (2020), clinical consultations that are made possible through video visits actually result in high patient satisfaction and lower the costs without compromising the clinical outcomes. It just showed that even if there is a COVID-19 pandemic, the patients still receive the quality services because there is continuous and no interruption in care. Lastly, according to Andrews, Berghofer, Long, Prescott, and Caboral-Stevens (2020), before the pandemic, the adoption to telehealth was very slow but when COVID-19 happened telehealth surged its way as the frontline of care necessity. It was found out that patients have a high level of high satisfaction with the use of telehealth because it enables them to communicate with the healthcare professionals virtually while staying at home that could decrease the transmission and contraction rates. 

Knowing the satisfaction of the patients is important because it will determine if the quality of care has been achieved especially during this COVID-19 pandemic. Actually, this innovation can be the future in healthcare that is why implementation of guidelines in telemedicine should be strongly established in order to ensure its full capabilities and prevent future problems and misunderstanding brought by this said innovation. It is a new paradigm for healthcare delivery especially in times of public health crisis like COVID-19 that is why as a student nurse, it is important to be open and be familiar with the advancement in technology in order to deliver properly the patient needs and to provide best practice in telehealth nursing that will positively affect the satisfactory level of the patients.

You May Also Like

1 comments

  1. This is a well-written telemed-related content. I really hope telemedicine becomes part of the Philippine government's implementation of its law on universal health care. There are a myriad of diseases that telemdicine solely may not be able to diagnose or remedy. However, it's a good first-line modality for prevention and wellness, which is an important aspect of one's health spectrum.

    ReplyDelete