Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, more patients are using their computers or smartphones to visit doctors virtually instead of in person.
But not everyone who needs to see a nurse or doctor while maintaining social distance can embrace telemedicine easily. One population may have an especially difficult time: elderly patients.
“In specialty areas with older populations, telemedicine isn’t always a possibility because our patient population is often not familiar with the technology,” said Kimberly Wallace, a doctoral candidate in the Ph.D. program at the West Virginia University School of Nursing and nurse practitioner with WVU Medicine.
Wallace specializes in patients with chronic kidney disease. People over age 65 are at an increased risk of developing it. Most of her patients fall into that age bracket.
Another reason her patients skew older? Wallace practices in West Virginia, where 20% of the population is over 65, the third-highest concentration in the nation.
“I’ve encountered patients who don’t have a computer with a camera, an iPad or a smartphone, which lessens their ability to complete telemedicine visits,” Wallace said. “I would say half my patients have chosen not to activate MyChart because they’re not comfortable with the internet.”
MyChart is a secure online system that allows patients to exchange direct messages with their health care providers and access their medical records in near real time. MyChart also has functionality for telemedicine. It makes confidential video chats between health care providers and patients possible.
When tech support is family
COVID-19 only complicates matters. Before the pandemic, some of Wallace’s patients had been communicating with her well through MyChart, but stay-at-home orders have revealed that it wasn’t the patients themselves navigating MyChart. With the patient’s permission, their children or grandchildren were doing it for them.
“COVID-19 has created a unique problem in that we’re incorporating telemedicine and video visits, but the patients sometimes don’t know how to use that technology, and the people who normally help them are being asked not to enter their home,” she said.
Because of these barriers, nurses and doctors may have to adapt telemedicine visits to telephone visits.
“In family medicine, we’ve had our nurses talking people through technical difficulties, but occasionally, I’ve had to do a phone visit because that patient couldn’t get connected,” said Laurie Theeke, a professor and director of the Ph.D. Program at the School of Nursing and nurse practitioner in the Department of Family Medicine.
When a patient succeeds in accessing and navigating the telemedicine interface, patients can provide information by answering questions.
“And if we are able to accomplish a video visit, we can also observe the patient to assess if they are distressed or having difficulty functioning, but there is limited ability to perform a physical examination,” Theeke said.
Some patients have been able to self-monitor blood pressures, blood sugars or daily weights at home. That’s helpful, but not every patient has access to this type of equipment.
Some information can’t even be conveyed over telemedicine. For example, patients with chronic kidney disease need to provide blood samples on a routine basis for their kidney function to be assessed. That can’t happen from a distance.
A window into patients’ real lives
But telemedicine can help Wallace determine a patient’s current needs and whether he or she requires an in-person visit or lab work. For patients who live hours from the WVU Medicine outpatient clinic in Fairmont, one of Wallace’s practice locations, that can be a boon. Who else benefits? Patients who can no longer operate a vehicle or those who rely on family members, friends, buses and medical transportation services for rides.
Another advantage of telemedicine is the window it gives nurses and doctors into patients’ everyday lives.
“It’s helpful with video visits to see the person in their own environment,” Theeke said. “As a provider, when you see someone in a sterile room, you’re not appreciating the real world they live in. With video visits, you might become aware of challenges they face that you wouldn’t be aware of if you saw them in clinic. This can give providers clues as to what other resources the patient may need.”
Putting research into practice
Given that a single factor of a patient’s life can have effects that ripple across his or her health and wellbeing, insights that seem trivial can be inordinately valuable to nurses and doctors.
A recent systematic review that Wallace co-authored — published in the Nephrology Nursing Journal — shows how these chain reactions can play out in the lives of hemodialysis patients.
She and her research partners — Saima Shafique, a doctoral student in epidemiology at WVU, and Ubolrat Piamjariyakul, the WVU School of Nursing’s associate dean for research — found that periodontal disease was associated with higher mortality rates in hemodialysis patients.
“Our systematic review supported that there’s a bidirectional relationship between periodontal disease and chronic kidney disease,” Wallace said. “Individuals with advanced periodontal disease are more likely to have chronic kidney disease. Comparably, individuals with chronic kidney disease are more likely to have periodontal disease.”
This systematic review provided the foundation for Wallace’s upcoming dissertation study into oral health among West Virginia patients receiving hemodialysis, funded by the American Nephrology Nurses Association.
“The dual role of a student researcher and clinician can be challenging under normal circumstances, but it has become even more demanding during the recent COVID-19 pandemic,” Piamjariyakul said. “As a mentor for Ph.D. candidates providing direct patient care, we recognize and support the balance between commitment to their patients and their doctoral program obligations.”
What she and her colleagues learn may apply to fields other than nephrology. Because older patients aren’t exclusive to kidney clinics, any nurse or doctor who has an older patient population is likely to face the same telemedicine challenges Wallace has.
Wallace’s insights may also be relevant after the pandemic has ended.
“I personally don’t think we’ll ever go back to quote-unquote normal,” she said. “I think that this is the direction health care was headed. It amazes me how quickly we, as healthbcare providers, were able to make this transition. In different circumstances, it could have taken years to get to this level. Once the pandemic is behind us, I don’t see health care delivery going backward — and I think going back to only in-person interactions would be doing just that.”
