The article highlights the unintended emotional consequences of modern technology in patient-physician communication, particularly as in-person consultations decline. Many patients receive disjointed medical information through apps and brief phone calls, leading to heightened anxiety and speculation about diagnoses. As patients turn to unreliable online sources for clarity, the article advocates for mindfulness strategies to help manage these intense emotions. By implementing tools such as the "Core 4" mindfulness tactics and fostering gratitude, healthcare providers can better support patients in navigating the often overwhelming landscape of medical information.
As face-to-face clinical time shrinks in harried medical practices, the healthcare ecosystem has hoped to leverage technology to span that gap-with lab, imaging, and pathology results bounced to health system apps.
Even if it's nothing urgent, our minds scramble for worst-case scenarios. People often find out unprocessed bits of medical information, detached from interpretation or context.
Hippocrates would weep. I find myself more and more in my practice helping anxious patients cope with these partial or disjointed inputs on diagnoses and test results.
But with some mindful tools, we can tend to these contacts with less tension. We can entrain some mindful preparatory work in approaching app searches.
#healthcare-communication #patient-anxiety #mindfulness #technology-in-medicine #medical-information
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