Consider the role of government and various professional organizations in the process of planning and implementing policies at management levels for diverse healthcare environments.
Without a doubt, today’s healthcare students, and all variations of clinical practitioners, are EXPECTED to be knowledgeable in, comfortable with, and at the very least open to learning how to apply ever-advancing technology as an essential element of patient care delivery. While some clinicians–and even administrators–argue that today’s healthcare providers are unwittingly substituting compassion and empathy with various virtual forms of patient care, high-tech, and Wi-Fi devices, many of you may have chosen healthcare BECAUSE you wanted to directly connect with patients as human beings, not virtual ones. This topic was being debated long before the pandemic.
Discuss if you believe, through experience or from research, that healthcare delivery is moving in the right direction with technology as the driver and determinant for defining higher quality care, OR should this industry revisit its past and develop policies where clinicians and patients build relationships through touch and bedside conversations as a form of healing and comfort? Is it possible to do both?
