Question

Explain the Introduction to ethical implications of digital communication for the patient-clinician relationship?

Answer 1

Introduction

Ethical principles are the key factors that direct healthcare workers in demonstrating standards of care. The basic and fundamental ethical principles include beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy,, informed consent ad so on.

We live in a technological era and these new technologies promise to improve healthcare by empowering the individual and offering new approaches to cope with the limitations of current practice. However, this generates specific and novel ethical issues. While in the past the healthcare professional was the natural intermediary in guiding patient access to health information, nowadays this role is functionally by-passed by new ways of digital communications using phone, video, and web conference.

There are various advantages as follows: Foster closer relationship between the patient and physician, Helps to enhance communication. The greatest benefit may be for adolescents with chronic health conditions who are at risk of disengagement with services.

Disadvantages include, impersonal communication happens, Often misunderstanding due to nonverbal communications, and patients may use asynchronous digital communication inappropriately for urgent issues requiring an immediate attention, leading to potentially serious harm.

The ethical concerns involving digital communications include Confidentality - There may be difficult to put forth confidentiality as there is a trend to share the personal information in the public space through social media. It does not allow for the traditional clinician-patient face-to-face interaction and there is uncertainty what the implications of this may be to the ethical and professional obligations of clinicians o It is unknown how digital communication impacts on patient trust or autonomy or on the balance between clinician’s responsibility to act in the patient’s best interests while respecting patient autonomy.

Conclusion

Digital communication can facilitate patient autonomy and empowerment and improve clinical care, but it may result in a shift in the patient-clinician relationship. It is essential to provide clear information to patients about the limits and risks of using digital communication in a therapeutic relationship. There is need for guidelines on good practice in the use of digital communication, including informed consent and establishing safe systems for data confidentiality and patient care.