Telemedicine between definitions and communicative implications.

Telemedicine was born from the encounter between medicine and telecommunications and is part of eHealth. It consists of the “practice of medicine without the usual physical confrontation between doctor and patient". In 1997, the WHO defined it as “The provision of health services when distance is a critical factor, for which it is necessary to use information and telecommunications technologies by operators”. Covid-19 has speeded up the use of the virtual both in private and professional contexts. This has proved to be very useful in medical practice, in particular in psychological, dietary and chronic support, although it is still discriminating for the poorly digitized categories. The result was a legislative ferment starting from the European Union which issued a Communication no. 689/2008, to promote telemedicine and in Italy the National Institute of Health (ISS) has set up a technical table to draft national guidelines. The quality of the relationship also plays a fundamental role in telemedicine. The relationship with the patient online, while maintaining aspects in common with the relationship in presence, shows peculiar traits that require ad hoc training. At the Melegnano-Martesana Healthcare Company we carried out a training course in 2020 consisting in 8 meetings of 2 hours each with subsequent supervision. Verbal, non-verbal, paraverbal and care of the setting are revisited at the service of the patient and of the professional to cure and to care the patient with respect for themselves.