How can we organise remote consultation services that are safe, effective and equitable?
Management in Medicine
Monday 18 October 2021 18:45 to 20:15Speakers: |
Professor Trish Greenhalgh, Senior Research Fellow, Green Templeton College; Professor (Clinical) of Primary Care Health Sciences, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford |
Location: |
Virtual Event |
The policy vision of remote consultations is of an efficient, safe and accessible remote service delivered through state-of-the art digital technologies and implemented via rational allocation criteria. The reality is less glamorous. Research reveals that in the real world, remote services involve multiple contradictions and tensions—for example, between quality and efficiency, or between infection control and patient choice—leading to ethical dilemmas for managers, support staff and clinicians. These dilemmas cannot be resolved by rigid standard operating procedures or algorithms: they require contextual judgement.
There are various challenges to deal with:
- political ones (because different interest groups gain or lose when particular services go partly or fully remote)
- organisational ones (because remote consulting requires new workflows, routines and staff roles)
- technical ones (because clinical decisions require high-quality, dependable links and images)
- relational ones (because of altered patient-clinician and patient-receptionist interactions)
- clinical ones (because patients are unique, illness may be unpredictable and examination may require contact).
This lecture will present a novel framework for Planning and Evaluating Remote Consultation Services, PERCS, developed from in-pandemic mixed-method research and literature review. The framework doesn’t tell you how to act, but it can guide ethical decision-making at the clinical and managerial front line.
The Management in Medicine Programme at Green Templeton aims to develop management and leadership skills for health and care systems in early career professionals. It is open to medical students, doctors in training, postgraduate students and others with an interest in healthcare management.
How to register
If you cannot access this registration form or require further assistance with registering, please contact naomi.benson@gtc.ox.ac.uk.
