Senseless Twitter Updates

• There's the visit where I can't hear the patient, or they can't hear me, although we can visualize each other on video. Frantic gesticulating ensues. Sometimes I have to resort to telephoning the patient while having them hold their rash, or whatever it is, up to the camera. Shingles is particularly easy to diagnose on a video visit as it can't be mistaken for anything else.
• There's the poor data quality visit where the video screen freezes or pixilates. Watching the patient dissolve into little cubes can be offputting to say the least. ("Mr. Smith, how long have you been falling apart like this?")
• There are occasional complications with pets - the patient's dog gets jealous or nervous and starts barking, or the cat walks across the camera's field of view.
• And then there's my favorite, the patient (usually elderly) who simply cannot figure out how to use either of the video options. Yesterday I had a particularly memorable example of this problem. I connected to the patient via the Doximity app but they didn't pick up, so I called the cell phone and got voice mailbox which was full. I finally tried the patient's home number, they picked up - the cell phone was shut off. ("Oh, so you can't do this on the laptop?" "No, you can't... did the medical assistant explain that?" followed by a tooth grindingly long delay as the patient turned on the phone and waited for the link to come through.)  As we are booked in with patients every twenty minutes, it's easy to run late if you get more than one of these in a session.