Table 4 An overview of the expected mediation of interactions between patient and palliative care professionals by teleconsultation

Types of connectedness between patients and professionals

1. Teleconsultation complicates connectedness with patients

2. Teleconsultation redefines the position of the home-based patient for better (being in control) or for worse (bringing the hospital into the home)

3. Teleconsultation might be an enrichment: keeping a finger on the pulse

4. Teleconsultation has a healing effect.

1. Keeping in touch

Respondent: “After I’ve seen the patient once, the following contacts could be virtual. But I want to look a patient in the eye once. What one calls ‘smelled, felt, and seen”

Respondent: “Well, you have to consider that demolishing barriers in favor of patients, by means of quick access and good, because direct, sight…, also has the disadvantages of [the physician] being directly exposed, a frustrated chain of care, and potential hospitalization [of the patient].”

Respondent: “Contact alone has a healing effect.”

2. Clinical hands

Respondent: “But a physical examination is impossible, as you cannot work through the screen (laughs).”

Respondent: “…[to prevent] patients arriving at the hospital about whom I think: ‘You should have kept him at home, family physician, because this patient is already dying.”

3. Seeing the person behind the patient

Respondent: “For me [teleconsultation] still doesn’t feel like having real contact with a patient.”

Respondent: “Or the patient needs it [an initial face-to-face meeting]. That is also quite possible, since I am a stranger to these patients.”