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Virtual visits at the Helsinki Head and Neck Center during the COVID-19 pandemic: patient safety incidents and the experiences of patients and staff
BACKGROUND: During the COVID-19 pandemic, health care had to find new ways to care for patients while reducing infection transmission. The role of telemedicine role has grown exponentially. METHODS: A questionnaire on experiences and satisfaction was sent to the staff of the Head and Neck Center of...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10181879/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37173703 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-023-09521-5 |
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author | Tolvi, Morag Oksanen, Lotta-Maria Lehtonen, Lasse Geneid, Ahmed Männikkö, Pia Ruokonen, Hellevi Majander, Anna Arminen, Susan Aaltonen, Leena-Maija |
author_facet | Tolvi, Morag Oksanen, Lotta-Maria Lehtonen, Lasse Geneid, Ahmed Männikkö, Pia Ruokonen, Hellevi Majander, Anna Arminen, Susan Aaltonen, Leena-Maija |
author_sort | Tolvi, Morag |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: During the COVID-19 pandemic, health care had to find new ways to care for patients while reducing infection transmission. The role of telemedicine role has grown exponentially. METHODS: A questionnaire on experiences and satisfaction was sent to the staff of the Head and Neck Center of Helsinki University Hospital and to otorhinolaryngology patients treated remotely between March and June 2020. Additionally, patient safety incident reports were examined for incidents involving virtual visits. RESULTS: Staff (response rate 30.6%, (n = 116)) opinions seemed to be quite polarized. In general, staff felt virtual visits were useful for select groups of patients and certain situations, and beneficial in addition to face-to-face visits, not instead of them. Patients (response rate 11.7%, (n = 77)) gave positive feedback on virtual visits, with savings in time (average 89 min), distance travelled (average 31.4 km) and travel expenses (average 13.84€). CONCLUSIONS: While telemedicine was implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure patient treatment, its usefulness after the pandemic must be examined. Evaluation of treatment pathways is critical to ensure that quality of care is upheld while new treatment protocols are introduced. Telemedicine offers the opportunity to save environmental, temporal, and monetary resources. Nonetheless, the appropriate use of telemedicine is essential, and clinicians must be offered the option to examine and treat patients face-to-face. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10181879 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-101818792023-05-14 Virtual visits at the Helsinki Head and Neck Center during the COVID-19 pandemic: patient safety incidents and the experiences of patients and staff Tolvi, Morag Oksanen, Lotta-Maria Lehtonen, Lasse Geneid, Ahmed Männikkö, Pia Ruokonen, Hellevi Majander, Anna Arminen, Susan Aaltonen, Leena-Maija BMC Health Serv Res Research BACKGROUND: During the COVID-19 pandemic, health care had to find new ways to care for patients while reducing infection transmission. The role of telemedicine role has grown exponentially. METHODS: A questionnaire on experiences and satisfaction was sent to the staff of the Head and Neck Center of Helsinki University Hospital and to otorhinolaryngology patients treated remotely between March and June 2020. Additionally, patient safety incident reports were examined for incidents involving virtual visits. RESULTS: Staff (response rate 30.6%, (n = 116)) opinions seemed to be quite polarized. In general, staff felt virtual visits were useful for select groups of patients and certain situations, and beneficial in addition to face-to-face visits, not instead of them. Patients (response rate 11.7%, (n = 77)) gave positive feedback on virtual visits, with savings in time (average 89 min), distance travelled (average 31.4 km) and travel expenses (average 13.84€). CONCLUSIONS: While telemedicine was implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure patient treatment, its usefulness after the pandemic must be examined. Evaluation of treatment pathways is critical to ensure that quality of care is upheld while new treatment protocols are introduced. Telemedicine offers the opportunity to save environmental, temporal, and monetary resources. Nonetheless, the appropriate use of telemedicine is essential, and clinicians must be offered the option to examine and treat patients face-to-face. BioMed Central 2023-05-13 /pmc/articles/PMC10181879/ /pubmed/37173703 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-023-09521-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Tolvi, Morag Oksanen, Lotta-Maria Lehtonen, Lasse Geneid, Ahmed Männikkö, Pia Ruokonen, Hellevi Majander, Anna Arminen, Susan Aaltonen, Leena-Maija Virtual visits at the Helsinki Head and Neck Center during the COVID-19 pandemic: patient safety incidents and the experiences of patients and staff |
title | Virtual visits at the Helsinki Head and Neck Center during the COVID-19 pandemic: patient safety incidents and the experiences of patients and staff |
title_full | Virtual visits at the Helsinki Head and Neck Center during the COVID-19 pandemic: patient safety incidents and the experiences of patients and staff |
title_fullStr | Virtual visits at the Helsinki Head and Neck Center during the COVID-19 pandemic: patient safety incidents and the experiences of patients and staff |
title_full_unstemmed | Virtual visits at the Helsinki Head and Neck Center during the COVID-19 pandemic: patient safety incidents and the experiences of patients and staff |
title_short | Virtual visits at the Helsinki Head and Neck Center during the COVID-19 pandemic: patient safety incidents and the experiences of patients and staff |
title_sort | virtual visits at the helsinki head and neck center during the covid-19 pandemic: patient safety incidents and the experiences of patients and staff |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10181879/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37173703 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-023-09521-5 |
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