• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

33 Charts

  • About
    • What is 33 Charts?
    • Bryan Vartabedian MD
  • Blog
  • 33mail
  • Foci
    • Social/Public Media
    • Physicians
    • Patients
    • Hospitals
    • Information
    • Process/Flow
    • Technology
    • Digital culture
    • Future Medicine
  • The Public Physician
Patient experience, Physicians

Touch | Beyond the Physical Examination

October 26, 2018 By Bryan Vartabedian · Reading Time: < 1 minutes

TouchI read recently about a patient who spent 4 hours in an ER but was never experienced touch by a human. Not surprising, really. Technology is doing a lot of what we used to do with our eyes, ears and hands. For better or worse.

While physicians often associate touch with the physical exam, it can facilitate more powerful things. Here are a few things the hand can still do:

  • Emphasize and express.
  • Clear up the ambiguous.
  • Encourage.
  • Guide and direct.
  • Connect and convey.
  • Calm and support.
  • Reassure, relate and respond.

Touch has the remarkable ability to make up for what’s lost or inaccessible through language. And in a time-constrained, increasingly ‘less present, environment’ human contact may be more important than ever.

Image (modified) from Ricardo Angel on Unsplash.

Related Articles

  • Thinking Beyond Health at SXSW Interactive
  • Creating Content Beyond Patients
  • Beyond Sharecare's Pediatrician Influencers

Tagged With: Doctoring 101, Physical exam, Touch

Related Articles

  • Thinking Beyond Health at SXSW Interactive
  • Creating Content Beyond Patients
  • Beyond Sharecare's Pediatrician Influencers

Primary Sidebar

Bryan Vartabedian, MD

Bryan Vartabedian, MD
Bryan Vartabedian is the Chief Pediatrics Officer at Texas Children’s Hospital North Austin and one of health care’s influential
voices on technology & medicine.
Learn More

Popular Articles

  • The Fate of Fired Cleveland Clinic Resident Lara Kollab
  • Cures Act Final Rule – How It Will Change Medicine
  • 12 Things About Doximity You Probably Didn’t Know
  • Should Physicians Give Their Cell Phone Number to Patients?
  • Doximity Dialer Video – Telemedicine’s Latest Power Player

Sign up for 33mail newsletter

Featured Articles

Context Collapse and the Public Physician

Will the Future Need Doctors?

The Rise of Medicine’s Creative Class

Yes, Doctor

Doctors and the Endemic Culture of Permission

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Footer

What is 33 Charts?

With a mashup of curated and original content that crosses the spaces of digital health, media, communication, technology, patient experience, digital culture, and the humanities, 33 charts offers unique insight and analysis on the changing face of medicine.

Founded in 2009 as a center of community and thought leadership for the issues doctors face in a digital world, 33 charts was included in the National Library of Medicine permanent web archive in 2014.
Learn More

Foci

  • Digital culture
  • Digital Health
  • EHR/Health IT
  • Future Medicine
  • Hospitals
  • Information
  • Patients
  • Physicians
  • Process/Flow
  • Quality
  • Social/Public Media
  • Technology

Copyright © 2023 · 33 Charts · Privacy Policy