Has Techmanity Become a Major Component of Advanced Health Professionalism?

Posted on | February 17, 2010 | Comments Off on Has Techmanity Become a Major Component of Advanced Health Professionalism?

Here’s the question: Can technology advance compassion, understanding, partnership and professionalism?

Parallel studies of large cohorts of patients and their physicians in the late 90’s in the U.S., U.K., Germany, South Africa, Japan and Canada revealed consistent agreement on the primary definers of a successful patient-physician relationship. They were compassion, understanding and partnership. Patients also consistently listed three deliverables that they valued highly as an output of the relationship – the processing of fear and worry; the reinforcement of important family and community linkages; and the promotion of hopeful futures for their patients. (1)

What is striking is that the values and attributes that others have used to define “professionalism” are perfectly aligned with the qualities that caregivers and their patients define as integral to a successful relationship with each other. Enter now advanced information technologies. Few would deny the benefits of these new resources on behalf of understanding and partnership. But what about compassion. Can technology reinforce compassionate care and committed human relations? (CONTINUE …)