Telehealth Considerations
Telehealth is a technology that has contributed to the complete transformation of the healthcare field. With the progress of this field, workers are required to attain competencies and knowledge that can be included to ensure safe and effective clinical practice. Thus, several areas of consideration can be allocated, such as license, liability, consistency, and quality assurance.
License
The first of them that needs to be considered is licensing, which is of particular importance when working with new technologies in healthcare. Therefore, specialists face the critical task of obtaining a specialized license that will give them the opportunity to practice telehealth. This necessity is due to the fact that individuals should know specific standards and norms of their work.
Liability
The following aspect that needs to be considered when working with such technology as telehealth is a liability. This indicator includes knowledge of possible problems that may arise in the use of new technology. The main issue in this area may be resistance on the part of employees. This may be due to unwillingness to take on such a big responsibility and technology anxiety; however, after completing the training, this factor is minimized (Tsai et al., 2019). Thus, to limit the influence of such a factor as liability, careful training and training of medical specialists is necessary.
Consistency
Indicators such as consistency and quality assurance are also critically valuable when considering the topic of necessary competencies and knowledge when implementing telemedicine. Halpren-Ruder et al. (2019) pointed out that “there is significant interest in telehealth services, with almost half of healthcare consumers now considered to be digital health adopters” (p. 602).
Quality Assurance
Quality assurance includes implementing measures to ensure the most effective and valuable use of new technologies in patient care. For this, it is also valuable to attract the most qualified and well-equipped healthcare workers.
References
Halpren-Ruder, D., Chang, A. M., Hollander, J. E., & Shah, A. (2019). Quality assurance in telehealth: adherence to evidence-based indicators. Telemedicine and e-Health, 25(7), 599-603. Web.
Tsai, J. M., Cheng, M. J., Tsai, H. H., Hung, S. W., & Chen, Y. L. (2019). Acceptance and resistance of telehealth: The perspective of dual-factor concepts in technology adoption. International Journal of Information Management, 49, 34-44. Web.