Certainly, having been a practicing rural physician for 14 years and an urban emergency medicine physician for 10 years, Dr Goodall is in a good position to be aware of telemedicine's benefits and ramifications. It has become clear to me that despite inherent limitations, telemedicine is here to stay and will play a steadily increasing role in providing a link between rural physicians and urban consultants and medical education resources. As with many new developments in medicine, patients may be more accepting of this technology than are we physicians. Scores for telemedicine are very high when patients are asked to rate their satisfaction with emergency department care.
Patients feel comfortable with the technology, trust it, and indicate a willingness to use it again.
In whatever field of medicine a reader practices, and whether the setting is rural or urban, I believe that telemedicine will impact his or her work sometime in the near future. Thus, the article is worth a good read by all.