RESULTS
In this study, a convenient sample of Healthcare workers from primary
health care centers were selected (n=109). The responders were
physicians (n=42) representing 38.5% of the studied sample. The age
ranged between 26 and 45 years with a mean of 31.12 ± 3.723 years and
experience of 1 to 11 years.
The physicians were subdivided into five specialties where family
physicians were the majority (n=24, 57.1% of the physicians) followed
by pediatricians (n=8, 19.0%) and the rest were internal medicine
doctors, gynecologists and family planning doctors. The nurses (n=27)
represented 24.8% of the sample, of age between 20 to 34 years with a
mean of 25.56 ± 3.320 and experience ranged between 2 and 11 years with,
dentists (n=12), pharmacists (n= 16) and physical therapists (n=12)
representing 11%, 14.7% and 11% of the sample respectively with age
ranged between 23 and 34 years and experience of 1 year to 12 years
duration.
In total, all the 109 HCWs completed the questionnaire in the first
phase. The majority of the respondents were females (n=99, 90.8%), and
10 responders were males (9.2%). Only 31.2% of HCWs were registered
for post-graduate studies, the majority registered for diploma 20.2%
and 11% for masters. Inferential statistics showed that there was
association between level of education and awareness of healthcare
workers of telehealth, 66.7% of those with master’s degree were aware
of telehealth while only 31.8% of those with diploma were aware and the
difference was statistically significant as P=.038.
In another aspect 49.1% of physicians were aware of telehealth while
only 29.6% of nurses were aware of telehealth and the difference was
statistically significant as P=0.048. At the same time there was no
association between awareness and different specialties of physicians as
P=.531. The total score was highest among physicians 141.15± 22.941
while it was lowest among pharmacist, 114.10± 22.283 and in between
among other professions, the difference was statistically significant as
P=0.0004 through ANOVA. There was no statistical significance difference
between the total scores of physicians with different specialties as
P=0.707.
Table 1 shows that the scores of different domains increased
after application of the program and the mean differences are
statistically significant in different domains as P˂0.05.
Table 2 shows that the difference between different groups of
jobs concerning health care workers satisfaction to implement
Tele-health is statistically significant as P˂0.05.
The total number of Healthcare workers was 109 HCWs, 54 (49.5%) HCWs
are aware of telehealth and 55 (50.5%) HCWs are not aware of
telehealth. Table 3 shows that age and experience in months
were the only adjusted predictive factors for awareness about
telehealth.