Awareness, Knowledge, Attitude, and Skills Regarding Telemedicine Among Syrian Healthcare Providers During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Background: After the widespread of COVID-19 around the globe, it was imperative to establish preventative measures to restrict the virus's transmission and enable clinicians to remotely monitor patients' status and avoid direct contact with them. The purpose of this research was to present an overview of the awareness, knowledge, attitude, and abilities of Syrian physicians about telemedicine technology. Methods: An online cross-sectional study was conducted from 1 April to 15 May, 2022 to assess Syrian doctors' awareness, knowledge, attitude, and skills towards telemedicine. The questionnaire was taken from published study, and the inclusion criteria consist the Syrian doctors who worked in hospitals during the COVID19 pandemic, mainly those who had direct contact with patients. Data were analyzed using descriptive and multivariate logistic regression analysis in IBM, SPSS V. 28.0. Results: Among 385 responses, 52.72% of them were females, 83.9% of them were aged less than 30 years old, and 66% were working in the governmental sector. 66% of participants have moderate knowledge about using computers and the internet, 80% have heard about telemedicine. Despite that, 95.1% of participants have not attended any training workshop on telemedicine, and most of them have reported no availability of a telemedicine unit in their department. Only 31.7% participants have shown high awareness of telemedicine. Furthermore, no significant correlation was identified between the academic level with the age and telemedicine awareness, knowledge, attitude, or computer skills. Despite that, there was an obvious correlation between age and computer skills (P Value<0.05). There was a significant correlation between the medical specialty and awareness, and computer abilities, especially the anesthesiology (88.5±5.2), (84±8.7) respectively. Conclusion: The study results demonstrate that most of the participating clinical doctors have a neutral view of telemedicine, even though they don't know much about it and don't have considerable experience with it. It is practical to educate and train academic staff, practicing physicians, residents and medical students within the clinical stages about telemedicine.