Opinions around the world : Part 2
DEVITA strives to solve the inefficiencies of the legacy healthcare system through a revolutionary approach, guiding global healthcare towards the decentralized future our world has been shifting into the past couple of years. Needless to say, the solution we offer is one defined by the needs and pain points of multiple different groups of people, and therefore, executing it requires more than a handful of passionate individuals with a shared dream of creating something potentially life-changing. This is why we decided to turn directly to healthcare professionals from all over the world, in order to learn more about the ways we could improve DEVITA, and to share our findings with everyone on our Medium.
In last week’s Opinions around the world, we sat down for an interview with a veteran anesthesiologist from Hungary, and received valuable feedback on our work. This time, we had the honor to talk about DEVITA with a renowned psychiatrist from the United Kingdom with 37 years of experience in clinical psychiatry. Prior to our interview, he asked to remain anonymous, therefore we’ll refer to him as Dr. F. in this article.
Q. In your field of expertise, honesty and integrity are fundamental principles. Have you ever faced any difficulties with patients who didn’t comply with these principles, or even worse, straight up lied to you about things?
Dr. F.: Oh, I most definitely have. Many patients feel a great sense of shame about taking care of their mental health, especially in the beginning of their treatment. Thankfully, this sense of shame fades away rather quickly in most cases, but needless to say, it can result in misunderstandings and initial difficulties when I meet new patients. When their dishonesty is rooted in the fear of being judged, it can be challenging to find a way around. However, in some cases, there’s nothing but forgetfulness behind it: oftentimes, patients simply forget to prepare all necessary documents and records for a consultation. It’s a frustrating situation, of course, but at least it’s not causing any harm beyond that. Postponing an appointment is always better than misdiagnosing a patient, or prescribing medication that doesn’t work, simply because I miss important details regarding my patient’s health status.
Q. Can you explain what happens when patients arrive underprepared, and your way of handling such situations a bit more in-depth?
Dr. F.: Like I said, when a patient fails to provide me with all required health records for their treatment, I postpone their appointment to the earliest date that works for the both of us. As head of the psychiatry department, I have many returning and regular patients, and fortunately, I have access to all their records that are stored in our hospital’s system, so I rarely have any documentation issues with them. The real problems start when I administer new patients who never received treatment in our institution before, as their records are out of my reach, and getting access to them often requires one too many emails and phone calls and lots of waiting that I have no time for throughout the day. This can be extremely frustrating in situations where treatment is needed urgently.
Q. What can you do in such urgent situations?
Dr. F.: There’s not much we can do effectively, as the safety and well-being of our patients are our top priority, and we’d never do anything that’d put them at risk only to secure fast documentation for the staff. We can’t prescribe any long-term medications without knowing what’d work and what wouldn’t for our patients, obviously. Occasionally, there are instances where the situation is so severe that we have to administer basic medication for our patient’s safety, and sometimes, as a last resort, we have to hospitalize them while we’re waiting for their medical records to arrive in our institute.
Q. Sounds like secure and trustworthy documentation plays a very important role in your work. Earlier, you mentioned that your institution has its own data storage system. Can you tell me more about it?
Dr. F.: We use a private cloud server to store our patients’ personal data and health records that we need for the treatments we provide. The cloud helps our work tremendously, as it makes access to our patients’ documents very easy. Ever since we left behind our health record storage rooms and overall physical data management systems, I feel like the documentation part of my work has become a lot easier, and I have little to no complaints about our cloud system. My patients seem to be satisfied with having their records stored safely online as well, where they can’t be lost, or forgotten at home when they’d need them the most. However, there’s one thing I could improve: inputting external documents to our system is practically impossible without a series of complicated procedures with other institutions, which is very time consuming — and time is a very valuable asset in our department. I think DEVITA’s decentralized data management model would be incredibly useful in solving this problem, both for us medical professionals, and for our patients.
Q. Besides documentation, are there any other aspects of your work that DEVITA could enhance in the future?
Dr. F.: I know for a fact that there’s a lot of people whose lives could be made a lot easier thanks to the telehealth functionality, medical professionals and patients alike. However, I’ve always been skeptical about it, and even after having had my fair share of online consultations, I remain skeptical. Consultations are a big part of my job, but I find them to be most effective when they happen in real life, in my office, where I can see my patient and person. Not necessarily because of the mandatory physical check ups I always conduct with them, because those can be done by my patients as well, if we have no choice but to meet online. But as much as a patient can send me their blood pressure level or heart rate, they can’t do so about the things they do unconsciously that tell a lot about their condition, when I see them right in front of me. In my experience, these things can often go unnoticed in video calls. For example, fidgeting of the hands, irregular breathing, restlessness, skin picking, avoidance of eye contact… These are just some of the things we keep an eye out for, as they can foreshadow important details that patients sometimes don’t want to disclose to us. Unfortunately, whenever I was doing online consultations, I found myself having a hard time determining the overall condition of my patient, simply because I couldn’t see them in person. However, I think this isn’t an impossible problem to solve. If I could have a better view of my patient while in the video call, it’d be much easier to see and read their body language.
Q. That’s incredibly valuable feedback that puts our work in a very new light. Do you think that your patients behave differently when you meet them online?
Dr. F.: Yes, they do. Of course, it’s highly circumstantial, and depends on each individual, but in my personal experience, most people tend to be more honest and cooperative in person. The general concept of online consultations is a great and highly innovative idea, but since it removes the personal connection between therapist and patient, it doesn’t feel “real enough” to many people, so what they do is disassociate from the situation. They’re there, in the call, but not exactly present: they talk to me, but they don’t say enough.
Q. Do you think there’s any aspect of your work that could be improved through DEVITA’s telehealth functionality?
Dr. F.: I think telehealth would be most useful with my long-term patients whom I already have a personal connection with. It could be especially helpful for regular check ups, and perhaps prescribing medication, too, for when it’s difficult to schedule an appointment for any and all reasons that prevent my patients from visiting the clinic personally. However, with new patients, I would prefer treating them in person, and only move our sessions to an online platform after a certain amount of time has passed.
We value the feedback and input of our users above all, and we’ll continue to improve DEVITA in order to be able to cater to the needs of both our user groups. Follow DEVITA’s Medium for more interviews in our ongoing series of articles, Opinions around the world. Please stay tuned to our Telegram channels and Twitter for an exciting series of updates to be announced within the next couple of months.
About DEVITA
DEVITA is a decentralized healthcare platform applying the latest digital technologies to solve classic problems in healthcare access, data, and infrastructure.
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