Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Sep 15, 2019
Open Peer Review Period: Sep 13, 2019 - Nov 8, 2019
Date Accepted: Dec 14, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Delivery of compassionate mental health care in a digital technology-driven age: A scoping review
ABSTRACT
Background:
Compassion is a vital component to the achievement of positive health outcomes, particularly in mental health care. The rise and influence of digital technologies in mental health care may influence the delivery of compassionate care, and thus this relationship between compassion and digital health care needs to be better understood.
Objective:
The purposes of this scoping review are to: identify existing digital technologies being used by patients and health professionals in the delivery of mental health care; understand how digital technologies are being used in the delivery of compassionate mental health care; and, determine the facilitators of and barriers to digital technology use among patients and/or health professionals in the delivery of compassionate mental health care.
Methods:
This scoping review was conducted through a search of CINAHL, Medline, Medline In-Process and EPub Ahead of Print, PsycINFO, and Web of Science for articles published from 1990 to 2019.
Results:
Of the 4472 articles screened, 37 articles were included for data extraction. Telemedicine was the most widely used technology by mental health professionals. Digital technologies were described as facilitating compassionate care and were classified using a conceptual model to identify each digital intersection with compassionate care. Facilitators of and barriers to providing compassionate care through digital technology were identified including increased safety for providers, health care professional perceptions and abilities, and the use of ‘picture-in-picture’ feedback to evaluate social cues.
Conclusions:
Implementing digital technology into mental health care can improve the current delivery of compassionate care and create novel ways to provide compassion. However, since this is a new area of study, mental health professionals and organizations alike should be mindful that compassionate human-centered care is maintained in the delivery of digital health care. Future research could develop tools to facilitate and evaluate the enactment of compassion within digital health care.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.