Defining and Refining mental health

RESPONSE 3

Responses to Colleagues ‘Postings

Eric W

The writer provides some crucial insights into the future of, and challenges facing tele-health. Interestingly, the writer mentions the need to increase the adoption of telehealth services in rural areas. This requires an understanding of the causes of low telehealth adoption in rural areas. According to Gurupur and Miao (2022), challenges in telehealth implementation in rural areas are in three broad areas: profitability of implementing telehealth, the rural population’s efficacy in using telehealth, and the availability of wired and wireless networks. More specifically, rural communities lack access to the infrastructure needed to implement telehealth and effective reimbursement models (Gurupur & Miao, 2022). They also lack the education and training needed to implement telehealth (Gurupur & Miao, 2022). Addressing these challenges will go a long way towards increasing telehealth adoption in rural areas. On a different note, studies have shown that telemental health is an effective alternative to conventional mental health, providing adaptable, effective, and affordable mental care for patients (Langarizadeh et al., 2017). Thus, there may also be a need to sensitize the population about the ability of telehealth facilities to respond effectively to mental health issues as a means to increase usage rates in rural areas.

Ola O

The writer emphasizes the concept of intentional rounds as a means to enhance the delivery of care and improve patient satisfaction. The writer agrees with existing studies that on the flip side, intentional rounds may trigger a tick-box culture, where nurses do rounds simply because the policy dictates that they do (Sims et al., 2020). Research around intentional rounding is limited. However, sources identify certain features that have been shown to increase the effectiveness of intentional rounding. Sims et al. (2020) recommends that nurses demonstrate compassion for patients during intentional rounding and that they use the rounds to build rapport and address their patients’ needs.

A second strategy would be to replace structured ward rounds with semi-structured ward rounds (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2018). Structured rounds use structured charts and checklists geared at soliciting direct, structured responses from patients (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2018). Semi-structured rounds fall between the structured and unstructured extremes. They do not confine the nurse to structured checklists, but allow room for the patient to give open, guided responses that help in building rapport with the nurse. This helps enhance patient satisfaction as it provides an opportunity to better respond to patient needs (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2018).

References