I recently received a social media forward listing 10 things that will disappear in our lifetime. One is the post office. I fondly remember cycling to the post office near my home in Mangalore in the 1980s to send wedding greetings to relatives and friends on behalf of my parents. The code for the standard phrase “Best wishes for a long and happy married life” was eight. The postmaster would send the message on a machine which worked silently without the dot and dash of Morse code. The last telegraphic message was sent in July 2013.
Among the other products on the list of things to be lost is the printed book, which will give way to e-books. In my late 40s, I find it difficult to use an e-book reader. The assimilation of information from an online document is difficult for me, though my children read, grasp and learn with enthusiasm, especially in the school-from-home mode. With a lot of guilt over the trees cut down to make paper, I take a printout to read.
The pandemic has made us innovate to provide services from healthcare to home delivery. There is a proliferation of apps which provide online consultation from the home or office of a doctor to a person anywhere in the world. Doctors have been dealing with a gamut of health issues from skin rash to spondylosis from their makeshift home offices. Patients have found ingenious ways to show the affected parts of the body, shifting between the front and rear cameras. These apps on smartphones have been helping patients seek advice for their recent or chronic health issues. Some have used them to get refills for their long-term medications. The government too has endorsed these services, rightly so, to provide online consultations to those infected with the novel coronavirus and on home quarantine.
Weak signal
There are a few drawbacks to this service: poor Internet connectivity can make it difficult for the patient and the doctor to interact online, especially while narrating symptoms or providing advice. Sometimes, both are seen moving around the home trying to catch the best streaming signal. A complete clinical examination of a patient is impossible, with the doctor restricting tests to gross movements of limbs or limited verbal or mechanical tasks. The physician can also miss out signs vital to make a correct diagnosis. To preclude this, a few radiological and blood tests, not all of them necessary, may be ordered.
There is an appreciable increase in the number of such online services and global investments for their development. However, these can never replace an in-person consultation. A clinical examination and a better rapport are allowed by a visit to a physician’s practice. Some patients will like to come back with the medications to be instructed on how to take or apply them. An external manifestation of a subconscious psychological problem can be discovered over a clinic interview.
Though happy that doctors’ clinics are not on the list of soon-to-be extinct services, I read the 10th article on the list, cursive writing, with interest. With online consultations, illegible prescriptions, patient notes and signatures will become redundant sooner than later.
sunilvf@gmail.com
