Treating patients at home through telemedicine. Healthcare professionals can provide remote clinical care using the knowledge required for this.
Suggested by: Coursera (What is Coursera?)
No prior knowledge required
No unnecessary risks
Since the emergence of the novel coronavirus in late 2019, the virus has spread to all corners of the world. The costs have been very high, as the number of infections has increased and there has been a loss of life, forcing us to adapt to a new “normal” in healthcare. The challenge of caring for the health of patients, their families, and our communities is enormous. How can we provide quality healthcare during this crisis? How can we focus attention on patients with chronic diseases and prevent them from being exposed to unnecessary risks? Some of the solutions that have been found are through telehealth technologies, a strategy that we will explore in this course. Telehealth refers to a complete strategy for providing medical care, professional training for healthcare professionals, administrative meetings or electronic medical record management, and patient education services provided remotely by social workers.
In this course, we will try to provide the basic tools for any healthcare professional interested in providing virtual care through any platform that offers video calling. Like any beginner, it is a challenge to integrate new tools into clinical care. But the most important thing is to take the first step and discover the new possibilities that communication technologies can offer. Standing behind a screen can initially be an obstacle to reaching a troubled patient, which is why recommendations have been presented for conducting empathetic interviews in virtual environments. At the same time, it must be recognized that telemedicine will soon become a standard in patient care, and therefore it is necessary to gradually integrate it into our work, with the guidance of experts in the field.
The course will also examine how medical associations and educational institutions have addressed the need to resolve the limitations of geographic distance in populations located in remote areas in order to promote equality in medical care and allow them access to quality health services in a timely manner.
The significant increase in technological developments has not passed by the health sector, enriching the tools and resources available to health professionals to ensure quality care. Especially in remote care, technology enables patient interaction, clinical monitoring, investigation and diagnosis. In this way, health professionals in the 21st century must develop their skills to integrate these technologies into routine clinical care, not only as an emergency strategy during the pandemic, but also as an additional option to provide care, reduce health problems and provide education.
The evolution of care models towards a holistic approach, in which the person is at the center and actively involved in decisions about their health, has strengthened the understanding of self-care and the elements that support it as a key tool for managing chronic diseases. Support for self-management has enabled people with noncommunicable diseases to not only understand their disease, but also to learn about it, to practice self-monitoring, and to develop the skills needed to make decisions about their own control. Telemedicine has played a central role in this process, and in recent years has become a key tool for reinforcing self-care behaviors, while encouraging the transformation of the relationship between the patient and the health professional into a two-way dialogue, which continues to promote communication between them and is also strengthened with the help of technology.
Telehealth should be simplified as a means of learning self-care through self-reflection training and remote simulation, while maintaining the ethical and legal frameworks of institutions based on respect for privacy, with the person and their needs at the center of decisions.
