Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Human Factors
Date Submitted: Apr 26, 2021
Date Accepted: Aug 31, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Dec 3, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
From Bedside to Webside: A Qualitative Study of Pediatric Clinicians’ Use of Telemedicine
ABSTRACT
Background:
With accelerated use of telemedicine, especially broad adoption with the COVID-19 pandemic, it is essential to maintain care standards and quality through effective communication. Virtual communication or webside manner may require modifications to traditional bedside manner.
Objective:
Our aim was to understand how clinicians conduct patient-to-provider virtual visits and communicate with families at a single large-volume children’s hospital to inform program development and training of future clinicians.
Methods:
Two focus groups of pediatric clinicians performing virtual visits prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, with a range of experience and specialty, were engaged to discuss experiential, implementation, and practice-related issues. Focus groups were facilitated using a semi-structured guide covering general experience, preparedness, rapport strategies, and suggestions. Sessions were digitally recorded and the corresponding transcripts reviewed for data analysis. Transcripts were coded based on the main themes and subthemes identified. Based on higher level analysis of these codes, study authors generated a final set of key themes to describe the collected data.
Results:
Theme consistency was identified across diverse participants, although individual clinician experiences were influenced by their specialty and practice. Three key themes emerged regarding the development of best practices, barriers to scalability, and establishing patient rapport. Issues and concerns related to privacy were salient across all themes. Clinicians felt telemedicine required new skills for patient interaction, and not all were comfortable with their training.
Conclusions:
Telemedicine provides benefits as well as challenges in healthcare delivery. In interprofessional focus groups, pediatric clinicians emphasized the importance of considering safety and privacy to promote rapport and webside manner when conducting virtual visits. Inclusion of webside manner instruction within training curricula is crucial as telemedicine becomes an established modality for providing healthcare. Clinical Trial: n/a
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