Opieka medyczna
5 most common medical messenger use cases
Udostępnij
%201.svg){kind=small}
There is no doubt that personal contact with the patient is fundamental for diagnostic activities and building a trusting doctor-patient relationship. However, in the face of progressive diseases of civilization and shortages in medical personnel, asynchronous medical care is becoming a key element of effective health and disease management in the 21st century in this context medical communicators set a new standard of doctor-patient communication, especially during therapeutic, preventive or adjudicative activities (about the advantages of medical messengers you can read here).
In the following article, you will learn about the five most common cases of using a medical messenger in asynchronous patient care. *
Compliance with the recommendations for taking medications (patient compliance), diet and lifestyle (patient adherence) is an essential condition for effective therapy, especially for chronic diseases1. At the same time, this is one of the biggest challenges for the doctor conducting the therapy. Research shows that sending recommendations electronically after consultation increases patient compliance, compared to traditional methods of transmission on paper (in printed or written form)2. That's why one of the most common cases of using a medical messenger is to electronically send recommendations to patients after an appointment. Thanks to this, the patient receives his recommendations in SMS (just like an e-prescription) without having to log in to another system or application. The recommendations received in this way are not lost and are more understandable than those written by hand. In addition, the medical messenger allows the patient to ask additional questions and gives the doctor the opportunity to modify the recommendations3. And this in turn reduces medication errors and unwanted side effects4.
Physicians use medical communicators for coordinated care as bridging the gap between deferred in-office visits5. Asynchronous contact with the patient works especially for patients who have recently been diagnosed or are starting a new treatment, which requires the doctor to monitor the patient's health status on an ongoing basis and possibly modify the prescribed therapy. Such activities do not require personal contact, and the ability to continue care after visiting a medical communicator has a positive effect on patient's trust in the doctor, adjustment to treatment, and even health outcomes6,7.
Not always all questions and doubts arise from the patient during an inpatient visit, which usually has a clearly defined time frame. Patients also have concerns during treatment, and when the next visit is postponed or there is no need to ask a single question, the patient most often searches for information on his own on Google or from a currently available random doctor. Such behaviors can lead to interruption of continuity of care, errors in treatment or undesirable side effects8. Therefore, doctors invite their patients to contact in the medical messenger, which is a safe space to ask questions and dispel doubts about health and disease.
The medical communicator serves doctors as secure and formal channel for asynchronous receipt of patient test results. In this way, the patient can send the results of the tests to the doctor and receive further recommendations without having to make an appointment or share sensitive personal data through informal channels such as SMS, WhatsApp or e-mail. In this article, you will learn how to act when you already receive the results of the tests from the patient on a private phone and why it is worth redirecting conversations about the patient's health to the medical messenger.
Doctors use medical communicator with patients with chronic diseases requiring systematic control of treatment and prolongation of prescriptions for prescribed therapy. The medical messenger allows doctors to conveniently extend prescriptions (and billing in the case of private healthcare) to their regular patients.
* The use cases have been prepared on the basis of scientific research and quantitative and qualitative studies of more than 3,000 doctors who use the Doctor.One medical communicator.
