Article
Telemedicine and My Stethoscope
The CMSRU Center for Humanism Newsletter
(2020)
Abstract
The current pandemic has forced us to follow new avenues of healthcare delivery. In my thirty-five years of medical practice, this is the first time when I have not used my stethoscope for more than two months due to COVID-19 related pandemic and shelter-in-place, yet managed to see patients exclusively via audio-visual telemedicine in my primary care office. Although the virtual proximity with my patients is highly rewarding in terms of maintaining the continuity of patient care and my professional ability, nevertheless the absence of tangible interactions with my patients has created a sense of vacuum in my auscultatory and other clinical examination skills.
The stethoscope has been an extremely powerful tool and an icon for generations. It has inspired many physicians at the early years of their lives to choose this hard path and become physicians, just like it did to me, in order to have the privilege of listening to the core of a fellow human being. Nowadays, my stethoscope sits on my table and keeps looking at me as I continue to provide patient care via telemedicine, feeling ignored, and as if it is gradually getting rusted.
I made this drawing of my stethoscope and colored it with my imagination as to how it would appear as being rusted. I just hope that this visual representation of a metaphorically rusted stethoscope does not become the fate of the bedside and office clinical examination skills.
Disciplines
Publication Date
Spring 2020
Publisher Statement
https://sites.google.com/view/thecoopercenterforhumanism/newsletter/spring-2020
Citation Information
Satyajeet Roy. "Telemedicine and My Stethoscope" The CMSRU Center for Humanism Newsletter (2020) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/satyajeet-roy/49/