In 2020, I wrote an article titled, ‘Remembering the art of medicine during virtual visits’. In it, I wondered how telemedicine could possibly allow us to make the humanistic connection that occurs more organically during in-person office visits.

Now, more than three years later, and after hundreds of telehealth visits, my patients have shown me how.

In December 2020, one of the bleakest periods of the pandemic, an elderly patient lamented that she and her husband would have to spend Christmas alone, away from their children and grandchildren.

As I tried to console her, I noticed and commented on a small knitted stocking hanging from the Christmas tree behind her. She proceeded to pull it off the tree and told me how her great-aunt had knitted it for her and had given it to her for her very first Christmas over 80 years ago. It has hung from her Christmas tree every year since.