DISCUSSION
This work aimed to assess the level of HCW awareness to telehealth
before and after an individualized orientation session was given. The
percentage of awareness among HCWs before the educational program was
50.5% which is almost similar to a study conducted in Libya as
they found that the awareness was 56% [10] . This
similarity may be because both studies were conducted in developing
countries of similar culture and infrastructure. The result is higher
than a study conducted in Iran (39%), but less than a study was
conducted in Pakistan where awareness was 80.7% [9,11] .
This discrepancy may be attributed to the difference in the health
sector setting where the studies were conducted; the study of Ashfaq and
collaborators was conducted in public hospitals while the current study
was conducted in a primary health sector [11].
In the current study gender did not affect awareness. Females
constituted 90.8%; 50.5% of them were aware, this was very close to
the awareness amongst males (50%). This result is different from Parvin
and Shahjahan study who found that the gender is associated with
awareness (p= 0.04), and this difference may be attributed to the
different health sector levels of the different studies