Getting Closer at a Distance: a Focused Ethnography of a Teleconsultation Service In North Italy

This article presents findings from a focused ethnography conducted in an orthopaedic tele-consultation service provided by a healthcare institution. Its primary aim was to overcome the knowledge gap in this domain by assessing communication features in real-time, through specialist tele-consultations by patients. As resulting from our data collection and analysis, we identified several contextual factors that can affect remote doctor-patient interaction, and thus the overall quality of the tele-consultation service. This confirmed the importance of assessing certain features of the interaction in real-time tele-consultations, and that logistic and technical adjustments may be fundamental in compensating for the inevitable lack of physical touch.