Keeping Patients Educated, Supported, and Safe at Home
Those in healthcare jobs are currently in the depths of providing healthcare in a heavily virus-laced environment. While the race is on to protect the nation with a Covid vaccination, the imminent arrival of flu season brings the two viruses to a head-on collision.
For healthcare providers, physicians, and patients, prevention is better than cure. It’s critical to try to keep people socially distanced from environments where they are more likely to be infected with Covid. With people safe at home, telehealth is providing patients with crucial access to healthcare expertise online during flu season and beyond.
In this article, you’ll see how you can best provide this form of healthcare, so that patients stay healthy and at home.
Delivering Expertise with Empathy
Though telehealth is proving to be highly convenient and safer for patients seeking medical advice, many feel uncomfortable with using such technical methods.
Professionals in telehealth jobs require patience and empathy, as they guide their patients through often complicated and unforgiving communication channels.
In telehealth jobs, you’ll have to understand how patients portray anxieties and frustration in different ways. You will provide the empathy and compassion they need to understand the crucial advice you’re giving them.
What Skills and Expertise Provide Exceptional Care Online?
The similarities between influenza and the coronavirus mean it can be difficult to tell which a patient has. The symptoms are similar, though coronavirus is more likely to have more serious, even fatal effects.
Your expertise in healthcare will require you to be able to know which course of action to take next, and the following telehealth skills will ensure you can do this:
Pharmaceutical – knowledge and qualifications to prescribe.
Decision-making – making that decision between whether medication is required, or a patient needs to be admitted to hospital or requires urgent medical attention.
Communicating – being able to give instructions on how to administer medication, for example. A misunderstanding could be fatal.
Continuing personal knowledge – research developments are constantly being made with regards to Covid and flu, and it’s essential you remain updated.
Coaching skills – to prevent flu, telehealth professionals should help motivate patients with better lifestyle choices.
Technical knowledge – knowing how to operate your own technology, as well as guiding patients on using theirs.
Adaptability – technology is ever-changing, as is medical research and advice. You must adapt, and keep up to date with both to be able to combine the two effectively.
Providing Education
Providing education is as effective as providing treatment, because it gives the patients the information they need to learn about prevention and cure. For example, today handwashing is an essential cog in reducing viral spread – but does a patient truly know how to wash their hands?
It’s surprising how many patients don’t know how to wash their hands correctly, and you’re the missing link. Take the time to explain to them and demonstrate to them. Education is power in the fight against flu and coronavirus.
Flu Shot Advice
Those in telehealth jobs are not only providing a convenient, safe way for patients to access medical care. They are also preventing extra bodies from attending appointments in already overcrowded hospitals that are trying to cope with a pandemic.
Preventing the flu with a vaccination is a highly effective way to eliminate it as a cause of symptoms in patients. If they’ve had the shot but are displaying symptoms, it’s highly likely you’re looking at a patient displaying Covid symptoms. This process of elimination will assist you in making the next best decision for the patient.
Your expertise in knowing when to recommend a flu shot to patients will play a huge role in the current battle to keep America healthy.
Treating Quickly
With flu, time is of the essence – there’s an approximate two-day window you can treat them before they get sick.
Telehealth plays an excellent role in providing advice and acting at speed. Without needing to arrange and attend an in-person appointment, patients can quickly access your advice.
Your efficiency in working under your own time management will maximize your effectiveness in patient outcomes.
Summing Up
Telemedicine is highly effective during flu season, even more so this year. Your skills are needed to provide lifechanging education, empathy, and understanding as we support patients through this relatively new channel of healthcare, and expertise in making lifechanging decisions.
Every flu season is a hard one for healthcare – with coronavirus thrown in the mix, telehealth is one of our biggest weapons in the fight to save lives.
Bring your skills to Telehealth Gigs today, and we’ll match you up to incredible opportunities in telehealth.
