You might categorize this under writing prompts.
From Fast Company:
How can you turn a possible Black Mirror scenario into reality, but make it sadder?
That’s what folks are saying about a new hospital trend: using telemedicine to deliver devastating medical news. A doctor at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Fremont, California informed a 78-year old man, surrounded by his family in the ICU, that he was unlikely to survive–by way of a rolling video technology “robot.” A nurse was in the room to accompany the remote conversation.
“We knew that this was coming and that he was very sick,” the patient’s granddaughter told KTVU on Friday. “But I don’t think somebody should get the news delivered that way. It should have been a human being come in.”
In addition, the family says, the technology suffered some clarity and quality issues. The hard-of-hearing patient couldn’t understand the doctor through the screen, prompting his granddaughter to relay the heartbreaking diagnosis herself.
. . . .
Dr. C. Michael Gibson, a Harvard Medical School professor of medicine, questioned whether a face-to-face convo is necessary in such instances. In a Twitter poll, over 4,300 replied, with 79% admitting they would “be upset” to receive a terminal diagnosis by telemedicine or robot.
“No amount of technology will supplant the benefits of the human presence and physical touch,” wrote one follower. “Empathy’s greatest benefit is by being displayed live, not televised.”
. . . .
According to a recent medical survey by Kantar Media, 2 out of 5 physicians participate in telemedicine or plan to within the next year. Meanwhile, half of consumers think they would feel less comfortable during a telehealth visit versus receiving an in-person diagnosis.
Link to the rest at Fast Company
Calling these “robots” is very misleading. What it sounds like is similar to what the hospital I work at uses for interpreter services. There’s a rolling desk with a laptop and camera and on the other end of the camera, in the interpreter services is an interpreter, but for something like this, it’s a doctor. It sounded like this was a small hospital (if I remember it right) and there was no doctor available. Sometimes there isn’t time to wait. They may have had to give the news that way to find out what the family wanted to do. Did they want to do everything even though the outcome was going to be failure or did they want to keep the patient as comfortable as possible and let nature take its course?
In the story I read the doctor said they had just received the MRI results.
The OP’s right of course, if the doctor couldn’t drop everything else and make it there in person they should have waited to tell him when they made their rounds the next day. (Lost on many will be the minor fact that there may not have been anyone to tell by that point.)
Me? I feel the info is more important than the delivery method.
And the so much ‘outcry’ is because far too many people need to start reading more than just the headlines and/or summaries.
Dr. C. Michael Gibson, a Harvard Medical School professor of medicine, questioned whether a face-to-face convo is necessary in such instances.
I hope he’s a doctor of research, because a doctor who has to interact with patients should know that this is a silly question. His question is consistent, though, with how technological advances always require the humans who use them to “go-back-to-basics” in the use of manners and common decency.
Horrifying. From Harvard no less. Does this individual have Aspergers or living with some other condition that makes it difficult to understand emotional exchange and social interface?
Telling patients they are terminal is one of the most difficult things Doctors have to do. It has an emotional cost, and one of the ways some doctors manage is by becoming impersonal and cold. Such doctors probably think that using a robot is a great alternative because allows them not to have to be in the same room with the patient, which is uncomfortable for them. Better if they admit that than trying to pretend that their avoidance is clinically appropriate.