There's a strong push towards phone and online appointments since 2020 (even AI doctors appointments) but I'm not sure that's a person getting the best possible healthcare. I wonder what your thoughts are.
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Here is my opinion, and I hope I don't upset anyone. I will limit myself to the field of psychology / psychotherapy.
To begin with, when someone asks for help, the first thing that should be done is an evaluation of the patient. Questionnaires provide information, but, as you know very well, there is a lot of non-verbal information when we interact with a person.
In online therapy, much of that information is lost; it is an almost artificial situation. We only see the face, on a few occasions the hands, there is no bodily contact such as a handshake, we do not know the proxemic distance of our client... In other words, online we lose a lot of information. The evaluation is poorer.
The empirical evidence that what heals is not techniques, but a good therapeutic relationship is overwhelming. And in my opinion, a good bond with the patient is better achieved in a face-to-face relationship than behind a screen.
Furthermore, a “depressive” never arrives at the consultation, perhaps a person who was fired from their job arrives, after a divorce and surely with a childhood that explains the current response to these losses. A person arrives, not a symptom. Working with the person's problems and not with the symptoms requires a good patient-therapist bond.
In my experience, a very high percentage of the men and women I treat in my practice have suffered some kind of abuse in childhood. In order to address these issues, which the patient may never have told anyone about or may not mention in the first few sessions, a level of trust is required that, in my opinion, is difficult to achieve online.
On a technical level, accompanying patients in the difficult situations that arise in the consultation is more genuine and real face-to-face than online. And, even if it's not “scientific”, a hug with the patient's permission can be very therapeutic. Until now, hugs have not been possible online. I could go on...
My opinion is that telephone consultations are appropriate for the current medical model, which is centered on the drug and the symptom and not on the person. All that is needed is a decision tree, put a label on it: “depression” and then comes the medication or a technique.
A now deceased Spanish doctor, Myra y López, called this way of practicing medicine “veterinary”, and I couldn't agree more.
I don't know if this long-windedness has been of any use to you. Maybe you fell asleep.
Happy weekend!!