An improvement of sanitary communication: the e-health as a new social and technological interaction
By Giuseppina Cersosimo – Department of Medicine and Surgery - University of Salerno
The communication between physicians and patients has become, over last years, very elaborate, part of a network of relations in which every contact is distinguished from deep and continuous social and technological arrangements and changes. The making of e-health and of all various means of communication and relation basically modified all relationships and interactions inside and across sanitary institutions, taking a substantive role in building new communicative contexts, processes, connections. All this is a prerequisite for a more developed information about health and care themes. These amazing technological changes ask for a careful and constant social analysis in connection with potential advantages and limits for sanitary communication.
This paper is the result of a field inquiry in a sanitary environment in South Italy realized between may 2014 and may 2015.
Aims of the research were: a. the opportunities and limits in the knowledge induced by e-medicine, e-mail, WhatsApp, smartphone, tablet ecc.; b. the core criteria for determining the impacts of these information on the relationships; c. the effect of online information acquired from patientsabout the power present in their relationships with doctor; d. thetransformation of thetraditionaldoctor-patientrelationship for new patient’s opportunitiesandlimits, in a new power balanced relathionship.
The methodological approach was realized through qualitative methods, making use of focus groups with patients and of intensive interviews with the physicians, where, without improvising: “you need to be sensitive to how your research participant responds to the questions” (Charmaz, 2014).
Fewconcluding remarkshighlight that every potential form of e-health, internet included, has become part of the doctor-patient relationship, modifying doctor’s “traditional” roles and fulfilling the principles to gain optimal outcome for the sake of patient. An emerging consensus supports online communication between patients and doctors in a relationship improving quality, timeliness and efficiency of medical care. Anyway, also for many deep-seated habits of doctors and patients, the face-to-face report, as well as verbal and non-verbal communication between them, remain (and will be so still for many years) still fundamental.