I just spotted a news item from last month reporting that only one in three U.S. doctors communicate with patients via email. We doctors were accused of lagging behind other professionals in online communication.
Well, I am one of the physicians already communicating with patients via email. Like everything else about the digital world, it has its benefits and its drawbacks. I fully agree that simple things, such as prescription refills, routine lab reports, and so forth can be handled best by email—often these do not even require the intervention of a physician.
It’s when we get into questions about health problems that email can be problematic.
I returned from a holiday weekend at home to find an email from a patient waiting for me. It had been sent late on Friday night. “Dear Doctor,” my patient wrote. “I am very worried.” He went on to describe bleeding, fatigue, and weakness. He asked me to call him when convenient. Then he ended the message: “I hope you have a good holiday.”
Three days had passed. My heart was racing as I called his home phone number. Fortunately, he was still alive, but he had not sought any other medical help. I sent him directly to the emergency room and he spent several days in the hospital recovering from a serious intestinal bleeding episode.
All of our patients are asked to sign a consent form before we communicate via email, and part of that consent involves agreeing not to use email for acute health problems requiring urgent attention, like this one. But it is so easy to send an email—much easier than calling the on-call physician or going to an emergency room. I’ve had other, less extreme encounters where patients emailed about issues that really
needed to be addressed in person.
If you choose to email your own doctor, realize that these e-encounters are probably best reserved for administrative problems or minor updates to ongoing discussions (like telling the physician that a recent medication worked well or didn’t work), rather than new medical problems. At the very least, you’ll save your doctor a Monday morning heart attack like the one I nearly had.
Comments (6)
Set up an autoresponder on your email, so that as soon as the patient’s email hit’s your server, your ‘out of office’ or automatic responder says something like:
“If this is an urgent medical problem please call XXXXXXX”. Additionally, if you are going on holiday or even a short break – you could let people know if the autoresponder/out of office assistant.
Just a thought!
Vinny’s idea is good – but to make it work well, hospitals (or wherever doctors work) should provide doctors with two email addresses: one for patients (so that such an autoreply would be appropriate) and one for all their other work related email (where the autoreply would annoying and would probably lead to twice as many emails between doctors in a hospital as they already have).
hi, just wondering if u could advise me about something. i am on the contraceptive pill (logynon)..i have been on it for the past few years but am coming off it in the next few months..i am going on holidays in july and am due to take my 7day break they which would mean i would have a period, i kno you can keep taking it but the month after that when i am due them doesnt suit either..so i was wondering could i re-regulate my period and when i am due to take my next 7 day break could i take a 3 or 4 day break instead and then just continue as normal?
how can i be a doctor.
Try http://www.housedoc.us. Its a free protal for communicating with your physician.
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