Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: May 8, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: May 8, 2021 - May 27, 2021
Date Accepted: Sep 19, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Dec 6, 2021
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Acceptance, Use and Barriers of Telemedicine in times of SARS-CoV-2 in Transgender Health Care: Results of a nationwide cross-sectional survey
ABSTRACT
Background:
The global incidence in the treatment of transident people is increasing. In the COVID-19 pandemic, many consultations had to be cancelled, postponed or converted to a virtual format. Telemedicine in Transgender Health Care management could support physicians.
Objective:
This study analyses the Acceptance, Use and Barriers of Telemedicine in times of SARS-CoV-2 in Transgender Health Care in Germany.
Methods:
This prospective cross-sectional study was based on a survey of gynecological endocrinologists and transident patients in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic. Descriptive statistics were calculated and regression analyses were performed to show correlations.
Results:
We analyzed the responses of 269 transident patients and 202 gynaecological endocrinologists treating transident patients. Most believed that telemedicine was useful. Physicians as well as patients rated their knowledge of telemedicine as unsatisfactory. The majority of respondents said they do not currently use telemedicine, although would like to do so. Patients and physicians reported that their attitude had changed positively towards telemedicine and that their usage had increased due to COVID-19. The majority in both groups agreed on implementing virtual visits in stable disease conditions. In the treatment phases, 74.4% (150/202) of the respondents would use telemedicine during follow-up. Half of the respondents would choose telecounseling as a specific approach to improving care (128/202, 63.2%). Obstacles to the introduction of telemedicine include the purchase of technical equipment (132/202, 65.3%), administration (124/202, 61.2%) and poor reimbursement (106/202, 52.4%).
Conclusions:
Telemedicine in Transgender Health Care finds limited use but high acceptance among doctors and patients alike. The absence of a structured framework is an obstacle to effective implementation. Training courses should be introduced to improve the limited knowledge in the use of telemedicine. More research in teleendogynaecology is needed. These include large-scale randomized controlled trials, economic analyses and the exploration of user preferences.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.