E-consultation as existential media: Exploring doctor-patient 'digital thrownness' in Danish general practice.

Autor: Klausen M; Department of Design, Media and Educational Science, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark., Assing Hvidt E; Research Unit of General Practice, Department of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Sociology of health & illness [Sociol Health Illn] 2024 Nov; Vol. 46 (8), pp. 1849-1863. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Aug 01.
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9566.13823
Abstrakt: In this article we use an existential media framework to explore the asynchronous, written and digital form of GP-patient communication that takes place through e-consultations in a Danish general practice context. This approach acknowledges e-consultation as more than a tool for information delivery and frames GP and patient not as skilful media users but as dependent co-existers: Both thrown into and trying to navigate the digital healthcare ecology. Through a thematic analysis of 38 semi-structured qualitative interviews with patients and GPs we carve out three themes unpacking the existential dimensions of e-consultation: 1. Patient and GP are placed in a Culture of non-stop connectivity and we show the ambivalences arising herein fostering both relief, reassurance and new insecurities. 2. Ethical challenges of responsible co-existence points to dilemmas of boundary setting and caring for self and co-exister in the digital encounter. 3. We-experiences illustrates the potential of e-consultation to signal GP presence, even when the GP is silent. We also discuss the existential ethics of care emerging from the contemporary digital healthcare ecology and call for empirically grounded studies of the existential dimensions tied to encounters in contemporary digital care infrastructures.
(© 2024 The Author(s). Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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