Acceptability, Attitude and Utilization Towards Telemedicine among People of Southern Punjab during COVID19 Pandemic

COVID-19, highly infectious, respiratory illness caused by SARS-CoV2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) virus. It has devastating effects with high mortality.Infection become worse in patients with pre-existing medical conditions. Hospitals increased the number of critical care units in order to stabilize the pandemic's crisisand to minimize person to person transmission, installation of telemedicine networks, distant workers and internet-based health visits. Objective: To assess the acceptability, attitude and utilization towards telemedicine among COVID19 pandemic. Materials and Methods: In Sheikh Zayed Hospital, Rahim Yar Khan, a telemedicine network was quickly set during COVID-19 epidemic. A descriptive cross-sectional study comprising 144 study subjects aged between 34-58 year who seek telemedicine problems of surgery, cardiology, ENT, dermatology, gynaecology and obstetrics, pulmonology, medicine and paediatrics. Results: Out of 144 study subjectswith telemedicine consultation percent distribution of ENT and pulmonology was (48) 33.3% followed by medicine, gynaecology and obstetrics, dermatology, pediatrics and surgery.Patient's satisfaction level was 62.5% in cardiac patients. In department of gynaecology and obstetrics patients satisfaction towards telemedicine was 88.9%, (65%) patients in medicine were satisfied, followed by surgery 41.7%. Gender wise distribution showed 64.1% males were satisfied followed by 61.3% females Conclusion: The COVID-19 pandemic is creating a historic global challenge for health care providers, patients, and societies. Telemedicine is now widely available at low-cost, and broadly acceptable by physicians and patients. Current study highlights the use of telemedicine and effective applications throughout COVID-19 crisis. Telemedicine played an important role for medical practitioners to manage the COVID-19 situation.

Unravelling the relationship between trust in government and voluntary adoption of preventative behaviour through health belief model: a cross-culture study

Purpose Despite the established relationship between the public's trust in government and their adoption of preventive behaviour, lesser is known about the underlying mechanism that explains trust in government-preventive behaviour nexus. This study adopted the health belief model to propose five types of health perceptions as a mediator between trust in government and the public's voluntary adoption of recommended preventions for COVID-19. Design/methodology/approach To collect primary quantitative data, a web survey was conducted using snowball sampling from Malaysia (N = 343) and Pakistan (N = 321). Measures were adopted from the existing studies. Structural equation modelling-partial least square through SmartPLS was used to analyse the proposed framework and hypotheses testing. Findings Results revealed that trust is a significant predictor of perceived barriers, benefits and self-efficacy in both countries. Mediation analysis indicated that perceived benefits and self-efficacy to be mediators in both samples. In the Pakistani sample, perceived barriers were also a mediator. Importance-performance analysis showed that the Malaysian public has a greater trust in their government to tackle the pandemic issue, while the trust was a relatively more important predictor of voluntary precautionary behaviour in Pakistan. A full mediation model depicted that coping health belief are an imperative link between trust and prevention. Originality/value Although developing the public's trust is related to good governance and public opinion, during a health crisis, authorities can effectively utilize the communication media and design interventions to influence health appraisals leading to higher adoption of prevention.