Family physicians' opinions on examination fear and telemedicine during the pandemic

Abstract

Introduction: During Covid-19 pandemic, many hospitals closed their outpatient clinics because of the high number of inpatients and individuals turned to their family physicians for medical care. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the opinions of family physicians regarding examination phobia and telemedicine video examinations during the pandemic.Methods: This was a single-centered, cross-sectional study. The participating physicians completed a questionnaire with 28 questions including their sociodemographic data, whether they performed examination during the pandemic, telemedicine knowledge and opinions on telemedicine. Statistical analysis was conducted using SPSS 20 software package and statistical significance was set at p lt;0.05. Results: 364 family physicians participated in our study and 163 of them (44.8%) reported hesitation while examining patients, with the majority (53.8%; n=196) expressing anxiety about oropharyngeal examinations. 211 of them (58%) reported having knowledge of telemedicine. The majority of family physicians thought that follow-ups and prescriptions for chronic diseases, repeat prescriptions, and post-treatment control examinations could be performed online whereas pregnant, postpartum, infant, and child follow-ups could not. While 40% (n=146) didn’t want to provide services via video/telephone examination, 32.7% (n=119) wanted to and 27.2% (n=99) undecided. 86.8% (n=316) of them believed that telemedicine video/telephone examination could result in legal problems. Participants estimated that less than 25% of their daily patients were suitable for telemedicine, and that less than 25% had access to the necessary technology. However, 55.8% (n=203) of family physicians believed that patients would be interested in telemedicine, and 59.6% (n=216) thought that providing such services would increase their workload. Being undecided about providing services through telemedicine was more common among women (p=0.029), while unwillingness to provide online services increased with age and years of occupation (p=0.024, p=0.004, respectively).Conclusion: Telemedicine, which has come to the forefront with the development of technology today, was seen as an opportunity to reduce contact with patients during the pandemic. However, our study found that family physicians believed that telemedicine services would increase their workload and that a large portion of society was not ready for this system. Keywords: Telemedicine, telehealth, covid 19, family physician.

Keywords

• telemedicine
• telehealth
• covid 19
• family physician
• tele tıp
• tele sağlık
• covid 19
• aile hekimliği