Telemedicine During A Crisis: Challenges, Opportunities & Way Forward At A Tertiary Care Hospital (Preprint)
BACKGROUND Telemedicine is utilized to deliver health care services remotely. Recently, it is well established due to pandemics because it can help the patients get required supportive care while minimizing their hospital exposure. In the future, it will continue to be used as a convenient, cost-effective patient care modality. OBJECTIVE The objectives were to identify physicians' challenges during teleconsultations and recognize the opportunities and strengths of this modality during the pandemic in a lower-income country. METHODS This cross-sectional study was conducted in a tertiary care hospital. The self-made questionnaire was filled through an online medium and responses were recorded on a five-point Likert scale. RESULTS A total of 83 participants were enrolled in this study. Most of them were Associate professors (29.8%), Assistant professors (26.2%), the ratio of the females was (52.4%) greater than males (,47.6%). 46 (54.8%) have laid between the age group 30-40 years. Pediatricians and senior instructors faced more difficulty in using telemedicine. The ones having clinical experience of fewer than 15 years or categorized in the age of 50-60 years faced challenges while using this modality. CONCLUSIONS During the current pandemic, situation telemedicine is the only glimmer of light to provide better quality health care. Telemedicine is an innovative strategy and it is important to understand the perception of physicians about it. Incomplete and inadequate infrastructure and attitude of the physicians is the main obstacle toward successful implementation of telemedicine. Successful installation and deployment of this technology require a complete grasp of the process among physicians.