Nursing

Study: Patients embracing telehealth, video conferencing

Nurse Leader Insider, June 8, 2017

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Nurse Leader Insider!

A new study suggests that patients are becoming more comfortable with telehealth solutions like video conferencing.

Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia published a series of qualitative interviews with telehealth patients, and the results were overwhelmingly positive. All participants indicated that they were satisfied with their telehealth visit, citing the convenience of receiving consultations from home, skipping office wait times and transportation costs.

One of the study’s authors, Rhea Powell, M.D., M.P.H., said that the video consultations could open up new opportunities for those who face barriers to medical care, and could be particularly useful for patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes and depression. Chronic conditions often don’t require a full exam, but they do require frequent short check-ins, which would be ideal for video conferencing.

The most surprising finding? Patients indicated a preference to receive bad news via video conference from their own homes. This goes against most clinical training, which teaches providers to deliver serious news in-person.

For more information about telehealth and nursing, check out the articles below from the Strategies for Nurse Managers’ Reading Room:

California Program Uses Telemedicine to Reach Medically Underserved

Telehealth provides opportunities to learn, educate and lead



Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Nurse Leader Insider!

Most Popular