JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The use of virtual healthcare has become increasingly popular globally since the COVID-19 pandemic. Immigrant populations in Canada face significant barriers to and disparities in access to and the use of virtual care. Particularly, South Asian immigrants often face intersectional impediments to healthcare access. Compassionate and equitable health care is required at all levels and is a basic patient right; however, a lack of compassionate, respectful, and caring health services is often reported.

Objective:

There is a large gap in the studies conducted and the literature published specifically on South Asian immigrants, particularly regarding their access to and use of virtual care and their perceptions of compassionate virtual care. This study is an attempt to fill the gap in the existing body of research concerning South Asian Immigrants in Canada with regard to what compassion, trust, and equity in virtual care really means for them.

Methods:

The framework on Digital intersections with Compassionate care will underpin this research. This patient-and-community-partnered co-creation research is informed by critical ethnographic approaches. This research will be conducted in three phases: (1) a scoping review to explore this emerging area of research; (2) compassion, equity, trust, and a productive patient-provider relationship in the context of virtual care will be explored via one-on-one qualitative interviews with South Asian patients; and (3) co-create the principles of compassionate and equitable virtual care via collective virtual meetings. This participatory research aims to have full engagement guided by the Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research - Patient Engagement Framework. Additionally, the Three Co’s Framework will guide the patient partnership. South Asian patients will be recruited from the community via the research team’s collaboration with community organizations and will be recruited via Facebook groups. Purposive sampling will be used for an estimated sample size of 15-20 South Asian patients. An inductive content analysis will be applied. The data will be read thoroughly, and then the text will be divided into codes based on the content within the data. The codes will be sorted into categories to formulate themes

Results:

The findings are expected to have implications for practice, research, and education.

Conclusions:

NA Clinical Trial: NA