Healthcare Professionals' Perceptions of Digital Counselling: A Qualitative Descriptive Study.

Area of Science:

• Digital Health
• Healthcare Technology
• Patient Care

Background:

• Growing integration of digital services in healthcare.
• Digital counselling is increasingly part of healthcare professionals' roles.
• Transformation of healthcare professional roles via new communication methods.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore healthcare professionals' perceptions of digital counselling.
• To address a research gap in understanding digital counselling in practice.
• To describe the evolving landscape of healthcare professional work.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative descriptive study design.
• Semi-structured interviews with 12 healthcare professionals in Digital Care Pathways.
• Inductive content analysis of interview data.

Main Results:

• Five key themes emerged: facilitating digital counselling use, patient involvement, holistic patient assessment, reciprocal understanding, and care-related decision-making.
• Digital counselling applications enhance patient engagement in self-care.
• Identified facilitators and barriers to digital counselling adoption.

Conclusions:

• Digital counselling, via text or video, involves patients in self-care.
• Core counselling elements (patient needs, goals, interactivity) are present in digital formats.
• Digital counselling possesses distinct characteristics compared to traditional methods.