Awareness, knowledge, attitude, perception and willingness to practice telemedicine for primary care consultations among family and community medicine resident and retainer physicians from a community-based family clinic chain in the NCR, Rizal, Cavite and Laguna: A cross-sectional study

ABSTRACT

Background@#Telemedicine rapidly became essential as a substitute for face-to-face consultations during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic but awareness, knowledge, attitude, perceptions and willingness level are not well documented and formal training in telemedicine among physicians was lacking. @*Objective@#This paper aimed to describe the awareness, knowledge, attitude, perceptions, and willingness to practice telemedicine for primary care consultations of Family and Community Medicine resident and retainer physicians from a community-based clinic chain in NCR, Rizal, Cavite and Laguna. @*Methods@#This study utilized a cross sectional descriptive design conducted from April 12 – April 30, 2021.using a pilot tested 33-item self-administered survey questionnaire distributed to 85 respondents. Data was analyzed and reported as frequencies, percentages and mean. @*Results@#Majority of the 82 respondents were female (58.5%), single (80.5%), Family Medicine resident physicians (63.4%), practicing within NCR (57.3%) and tenure of > 1 year (91.5%.) The respondents were somewhat knowledgeable about telemedicine technology and tools, strongly agreed that they were aware of telemedicine platforms (mean of 4.76) and agreed (mean 3.54) that telemedicine was convenient. However, they strongly disagreed (mean = 1.74) that it could completely replace face-to-face consults. They agreed that telemedicine was a viable healthcare approach with a mean of 3.62 and strongly agreed (mean = 4.33) that continuous training on telemedicine was necessary. Willingness to be trained yielded a mean of 4.2. @*Conclusion@#Although there was good awareness and positive attitude towards telemedicine, knowledge was limited. Telemedicine was perceived positively. In fact, most respondents were willing to be trained and adopt telemedicine. This study yielded good baseline data for future research. Future studies can include the effects of training in telemedicine among physicians providing primary care and how it will improve primary care consultations using telemedicine.