{"title":"Evaluation of Awareness and Attitude of Telemedicine among Primary Healthcare Workers in Deprived Area Health Centers.","authors":"Mahdi Mazandarani, Narges Lashkarbolouk, Mitra Hashemi","doi":"10.1155/2023/5572286","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Telemedicine has the potential to make healthcare more efficient, organized, and available and is a more beneficial technology that can ease preventive treatment and improve long-term health management. This is especially essential for those who face financial or regional reasons to get quality treatment. Telemedicine in Iran is a new medical field and a noble way to access medical facilities for populations living in deprived areas, and the primary healthcare workers in these deprived medical centers are the implementers of telemedicine in those areas; we aimed to investigate the awareness and attitude towards telemedicine among all the healthcare workers in these centers.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>This is a descriptive cross-sectional study at the Health Centers of Raz County in North Khorasan Province, Iran, and 149 healthcare workers were included. For collecting information, we used a questionnaire that consisted of two parts. The first part contains the demographic data of health care workers, and the second part includes the 5-point Likert scale questionnaire (questions on telemedicine awareness, attitude, and self-report readiness).</p><p><strong>Result: </strong>Most participants (51%) were male, and 69.8% were married. The most frequent sources of information about telemedicine are colleagues (40.3%), continuing education (24.7%), and social media and the internet (10.1%). Awareness did not significantly relate to gender, age, marital status, or work experience, but awareness of physicians and midwives is higher than other groups (<i>p</i> < 0.05). The awareness of healthcare workers using continuing education, articles, workshops, or conferences was significantly higher (<i>p</i> < 0.05). The attitude scores for most questions are above 3.4 and reflect a positive attitude about telemedicine. Attitudes did not show a significant relation to gender, age, marital status, or work experience.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Using telemedicine in developing countries, rural or urban areas have a high potential to improve epidemiological investigations, disease control, and clinical case management. Providing healthcare professionals with more information about new technologies in healthcare, such as telemedicine, can help get a more realistic picture of their perceptions.</p>","PeriodicalId":45630,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Telemedicine and Applications","volume":"2023 ","pages":"5572286"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10547571/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"International Journal of Telemedicine and Applications","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1155/2023/5572286","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2023/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HEALTH CARE SCIENCES & SERVICES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: Telemedicine has the potential to make healthcare more efficient, organized, and available and is a more beneficial technology that can ease preventive treatment and improve long-term health management. This is especially essential for those who face financial or regional reasons to get quality treatment. Telemedicine in Iran is a new medical field and a noble way to access medical facilities for populations living in deprived areas, and the primary healthcare workers in these deprived medical centers are the implementers of telemedicine in those areas; we aimed to investigate the awareness and attitude towards telemedicine among all the healthcare workers in these centers.
Method: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study at the Health Centers of Raz County in North Khorasan Province, Iran, and 149 healthcare workers were included. For collecting information, we used a questionnaire that consisted of two parts. The first part contains the demographic data of health care workers, and the second part includes the 5-point Likert scale questionnaire (questions on telemedicine awareness, attitude, and self-report readiness).
Result: Most participants (51%) were male, and 69.8% were married. The most frequent sources of information about telemedicine are colleagues (40.3%), continuing education (24.7%), and social media and the internet (10.1%). Awareness did not significantly relate to gender, age, marital status, or work experience, but awareness of physicians and midwives is higher than other groups (p < 0.05). The awareness of healthcare workers using continuing education, articles, workshops, or conferences was significantly higher (p < 0.05). The attitude scores for most questions are above 3.4 and reflect a positive attitude about telemedicine. Attitudes did not show a significant relation to gender, age, marital status, or work experience.
Conclusion: Using telemedicine in developing countries, rural or urban areas have a high potential to improve epidemiological investigations, disease control, and clinical case management. Providing healthcare professionals with more information about new technologies in healthcare, such as telemedicine, can help get a more realistic picture of their perceptions.
期刊介绍：
The overall aim of the International Journal of Telemedicine and Applications is to bring together science and applications of medical practice and medical care at a distance as well as their supporting technologies such as, computing, communications, and networking technologies with emphasis on telemedicine techniques and telemedicine applications. It is directed at practicing engineers, academic researchers, as well as doctors, nurses, etc. Telemedicine is an information technology that enables doctors to perform medical consultations, diagnoses, and treatments, as well as medical education, away from patients. For example, doctors can remotely examine patients via remote viewing monitors and sound devices, and/or sampling physiological data using telecommunication. Telemedicine technology is applied to areas of emergency healthcare, videoconsulting, telecardiology, telepathology, teledermatology, teleophthalmology, teleoncology, telepsychiatry, teledentistry, etc. International Journal of Telemedicine and Applications will highlight the continued growth and new challenges in telemedicine, applications, and their supporting technologies, for both application development and basic research. Papers should emphasize original results or case studies relating to the theory and/or applications of telemedicine. Tutorial papers, especially those emphasizing multidisciplinary views of telemedicine, are also welcome. International Journal of Telemedicine and Applications employs a paperless, electronic submission and evaluation system to promote a rapid turnaround in the peer-review process.
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