Consulting a doctor online using video calls, audio calls and chat messages has numerous advantages. After a regular doctor consultation, most of the time your doctor will ask you to come for a followup visit after one or two weeks. Just imagine if you could do the follow up consultation online! In this article I’ll tell you how to use online doctor consultation service like Dofody for an effective follow-up with your favorite doctor.
For most health problems whenever the doctor comes to a diagnosis and then prescribes a medicine or two, he will ask the patient to visit him after a particular number of days. This is done in order to find out how the patient has responded to the medicines and to correct or update the prescription if needed. The doctor can also send for investigations like blood tests on the first visit and ask the patient to bring in the reports or results at the time of the follow up visit.
Most of the patients often skip the follow up visit when their illness gets controlled or cured with the medicines the doctor had prescribed. Even if they had done the blood test the doctor advised, they will collect the report from the laboratory and either they will ask for the laboratory technician’s opinion about the result or simply do a google search for the normal values of the test to learn more about the test. They don’t consider going back to the doctor simply because of the lack of time and because they fear that the doctor might charge them extra fee for the second visit. I am not saying that doctors don’t take a fee for the follow up visit, but most of the doctor’s don’t practice in such a manner.
By skipping the follow up doctor consultation, the patient is shutting the door on some of the valuable feedback’s that the doctor is anticipating. The doctor on the other hand is missing out on the information regarding how the patient had responded to the particular brand of medicines that he prescribed. He is also standing in the dark when it comes to medicine complaints by the patient.
Doctor shopping and hospital hopping often results when patients skip the follow up consultation. They are looking out for new doctors a new medicines without giving an opportunity for the first doctor to better understand the patients condition and to modify the diagnosis and prescription.
Using Dofody, the doctor’s can ask the patient to do the follow up consultation online. the patient need not take another doctor appointment, take leave from job or travel to the doctors office just to get the doctors opinion on the blood report. By logging into their account, patients can choose their doctor and then send them a follow up consultation requests whenever the time is due. The doctor can easily identify the patient by opening his app, click on the patients profile and browse through the patient’s medical records including the latest blood reports and other laboratory reports. After studying the reports, the doctor can call the patient back to inquire about his symptoms, allergic reactions to medicines if any and then write another prescription if needed. The possibilities of follow up consultations when done online is not just limited to simply outpatient department ailments.
Suppose a patient had undergone a surgery and was discharged after 3 days. The surgeon can follow-up this patient by sitting in his office and examining the patient who is now at his home through Dofody video calls. Inquiries regarding pain management, surgical site drains, bowel movements, suture status can be made and advises in the form of prescriptions are given within the app. Suture removal and drain removal can only be made by a healthcare professional and for that the patient can attend a nearby hospital or ask a healthcare professional to attend his home.
In a regular doctor consultation, the patient has to wait till the schedule date of follow up visit in order to meet the doctor and share his problems. Suppose the patient had no relief of symptoms even after 2 days of treatment, he still has to wait another 3 days to visit the doctor. Another option for the patient is to re-plan the follow up doctor appointment. By using the follow up consultation services provided by Dofody, the patient can send a request to the same doctor with a few taps on the screen, the doctor can attend the patient’s request whenever he is free and edit the prescription if required. This makes online doctor consultation a better option when it comes to follow up visits as the patient is benefiting immediately without wasting time.
Allergic reactions to certain antibiotics are very common and most of the patients need to attend a different doctor or hospital in case they develop allergic reactions to the initially prescribed antibiotics. This is because by the time the reactions develop, the initial doctor’s practice would have closed and this causes the patient to seek for medical advice from another clinic. But when the patients are using Dofody they can get a prescription online from the same doctor, the doctor can make a note on the medical record that this particular patient is allergic to the specific antibiotic. As online doctor consultation service is not constrained by the time of the day, emergency follow up visits as required in the case of medicine allergies can be handled in a much better way. I would also like to point out the fact that in addition to antibiotics allergies are often found in other categories of medicines like painkillers, anti-viral drugs, anti-hypertensive drugs etc.
Now, if you think that online follow up doctor consultations are worth it, why not get started with Dofody by creating a new account? If Doctor’s think that they can get better follow up visits from patient’s by using online services, go ahead and create a new Dofody account in Dofody.
Have you used any online consultation service? what do you think about this article? if you liked it consider sharing it with your friends and family.