The first experience that I had with telehealth/telemedicine was at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic when working at an OBGYN outpatient office. While most outpatient clinics in the hospital could reschedule their patients, the clinic I worked at decided to utilize ZOOM because of the time sensitive nature of the appointments our patients had. Although setting up the appointments on an administrative side was a nightmare at the beginning, the telehealth appointments were a huge hit with the patients and providers. It was a long process to figure out how to incorporate telehealth medicine into the regular workflow of the clinic, as well as how the billing would work for these types of visits. Now, over two years later, the clinic offers telehealth as a regular option for patients who qualify for this type of visit and it has allowed some of our providers (social work, psych, prenatal intake appointments, etc.) to go completely remote and save on time and resources. Although I was wary of telemedicine at the first introduction I had with it, I now see the practicality of these online visits and how beneficial they can be to our patients and staff, especially during the pandemic.

Before this lecture, I truly was unaware of the differences between telemedicine and telehealth. While telemedicine refers to the specific clinical resources being remote, telehealth encompasses the nonclinical resources provided remotely by the medical institution. I was surprised to see that the idea of telemedicine had been around since the 1950s, since I had only become aware of it in 2020, and hospitals were able to use televisions to connect patients to another hospital that offered a specific service in order for them to be seen from a distance. Today, nurses and physicians are able to monitor a whole group of patients in a centralized location with the use of monitors and technology to detect small changes in their patients’ condition and intervene at an early stage then they would have been able to in the past. In order to enhance my own career by utilizing telemedicine, I could incorporate my nursing practice techniques to include the usage of technology and remote monitoring to keep an eye on my patients if I am working in an inpatient setting. I could also utilize health care providers that are not on site to allow for a more specialized input on the patient than I would be able to get from just the services my hospital will provide. I think that incorporating telehealth and telemedicine into nursing practice, or any medical practice in general, is so beneficial to our patients and establishes an interprofessional approach to the care and well-being of the people we are caring for.