Telemedicine in Acute Care

I have participated in some telemedicine in the past few years. I have had some over the phone appointments with my primary care provider for things that did not require in person assessments. I have participated in zoom call counseling and zoom call therapy. During the pandemic I experienced a lot of social anxiety and health anxiety so the Telehealth that I participated in alleviated a little bit of that anxiety for me. Before the pandemic if you asked me what I knew about Telehealth or telemedicine I would not have known what that actually meant. I know now that telemedicine refers to clinical and medical services provided over phone or video call and Telehealth is more about counseling or patient education. I did not know what zoom was until we implemented it at UNE for classes. Something else that has changed for me personally since the pandemic is the implementation of online patient portals that connect you to your healthcare services much easier and quicker. I am now able to message my PCP through my portal and get answers that I need fast, get prescriptions filled without having to make appointments.  I think this change occurred because of the shift to online care due to the pandemic and also advances in technology in our society. 

I think Telehealth and telemedicine has helped a lot of people that have anxiety about entering healthcare facilities especially when there was a significant increase in chances of contracting COVID while being at a healthcare facility. I think it also helped people living in rural communities that have transportation barriers when trying to get to their appointments. I think one barrier with it though may have been if people struggle to have internet access, zooming may be hard for them, but phone calls may work better for that population. I want to keep all these aspects in mind in my nursing career because inquiring if telemedicine would benefit certain patient populations instead of being in person could be beneficial if they will be able to participate in that care more. Other aspects of telemedicine that may be beneficial could be patients with blood pressure, glucose meters, or oxygen saturation meters that can connect to the healthcare system via bluetooth so that their doctor can stay connected to the patient’s healthcare from a distance.