Health in Emergencies & Disasters Quarterly (Jul 2024)
Examining the Counseling Needs of COVID-19 Hotline Callers: A Summative Content Analysis
Abstract
Background: It is important to provide reliable information to people during a pandemic to prevent social fear. In this regard, the present study investigates the counseling needs of people who call the COVID-19 hotline in Yazd Province, Iran. Materials and Methods: In this qualitative study, the summative content analysis method was used. Due to possible changes in the counseling needs of the callers over time, the researchers first randomly checked 5% of all calls received each day. Data saturation was obtained by examining 5% of calls that were randomly selected. After reading the recorded interviews, the selected words were counted and entered into an Excel file. The keywords were then ranked. All keywords that seemed to have similar content were placed in related groups. Results: A total of 1023 audio files were analyzed. About 1279 analysis units were extracted and categorized into 17 sub-categories and 4 main categories. Among these, 80% of the obtained analyzed units were assigned to 8 subclasses, namely counseling needs regarding the symptoms of the disease (35.97%), patient care at home (9.38%), ways of disease transmission (7.27%), centers that provide services to patients (5.94%), fear of visiting medical centers (5.79%), reports of non-compliance with health protocols (5.55%), personal protective equipment (5.32%), disinfection of equipment and food (5.08%) were included. Conclusion: Establishing a hotline during an epidemic is an easy and quick method. One of the missing links in such systems is the existence of a monitoring team and a suitable content production team. It is necessary to hear the calls received simultaneously or daily by a scientific committee and provide feedback to the respondents to identify the counseling needs of the community members.
