Over the past year and a half, the notion of change and continuous development in the nursing practice had become of utmost importance, as the global pandemic outbreak forced both practitioners and patients to embrace modified approaches to care. Such an immediate and large-scale need to redefine patient care has understandably raised a series of ethical concerns. Currently, I do my best to use the course materials to seek answers and ethically reasonable solutions to patient care, but the most meaningful insight I have gained so far is that every solution to an ethical dilemma remains ambiguous.
For example, during one of my interactions with the patient, I was asked whether the hospital had the policy to avoid face-to-face interaction during the pandemic with the help of video examinations. I had to address my supervisors, who explained that at the time, this option was unavailable due to the high risks of data security breach and lack of corporate video software to contact the patients without using personal accounts. After this interaction, I decided to dwell on the ethical implications of replacing face-to-face interaction with the medical examiner.
On the one hand, the practice of remote patient supervision should be perceived as considerate given the risks of COVID-19 infection during face-to-face interactions. It is natural for public health care to identify ways to modify the principles of accessing care. For example, in the empirical study by Shaw et al. (2020), the researchers decided to compare face-to-face interactions with the instances of video consultations. While estimating that video consultations tend to completely alter the flow of the conversation and level of trust between the patient and the practitioner, the overall prognosis for implementing video consultations is optimistic (Shaw et al., 2020). Based on this evidence, it is reasonable to assume that the gradual shift towards online communication between clinicians and patients is inevitable. For this reason, public institutions need to elaborate on the framework for safe virtual communication by presenting hospital software with limited data access.
On the other hand, however, the challenge of embracing digital interaction with patients has a series of potential threats to the practice. One of the primary risks of such a rapid change is the clinicians and patients distancing themselves from the conventional approaches to a medical examination. Once video consultations become widely used by the community, chances are people will be less likely to return to face-to-face interactions due to the convenience of such interaction. Meanwhile, the researchers emphasize that “face-to-face consultation between physician and patient remains the gold standard of clinical care” (Solimini et al., 2021, p. 2).
The issue of shifting to telemedicine and remote therapy is also challenged by such factors as informed consent and social discrimination. Indeed, many patients settle for remote examination and consultation without understanding the risks, gaps, and security implications of remote treatment. The growing interest in video consultations may also affect the notion of inclusion and social equality, as it is unethical to imply that patients have access to technology in order to practice telemedicine.
Thus, having taken everything into consideration, it becomes evident that nursing and the medical field, in general, cannot exist without a critical appraisal of the modifications introduced to health care. For every argument in favor of introducing such a change as remote therapy, one can find a series of reasons to criticize it. Hence, learning to perceive such phenomena as new technology critically is the first step towards creating a sensitive approach to care.
References
Shaw, S. E., Seuren, L. M., Wherton, J., Cameron, D., Vijayaraghavan, S., Morris, J., Bhattacharya, S., & Greenhalgh, T. (2020). Video consultations between patients and clinicians in diabetes, cancer, and heart failure services: Linguistic ethnographic study of video-mediated interaction. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(5). Web.
Solimini, R., Busardò, F. P., Gibelli, F., Sirignano, A., & Ricci, G. (2021). Ethical and Legal challenges of telemedicine in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. Medicina, 57(12), 1-10. Web.