Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Aging
Date Submitted: Jan 11, 2022
Date Accepted: Jul 11, 2022
Date Submitted to PubMed: Jul 13, 2022
Understanding the Experience of Geriatric Care Professionals in Using Telemedicine to Care for Older Patients in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed-Methods Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Geriatric care professionals were forced to rapidly adopt the use of telemedicine technologies to ensure the continuity of care for their older patients in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is little current literature that describes how telemedicine technologies can best be employed to meet the needs of geriatric care professionals in providing care to frail older patients, their caregivers and families.
Objective:
This study aimed to identify the benefits and challenges geriatric care professionals face when using telemedicine technologies with frail older patients, their caregivers and families, and how to maximize the benefits of this method of providing care.
Methods:
This was a mixed-methods study that recruited geriatric care professionals to complete an online survey regarding their personal demographics and experiences with using telemedicine technologies and participate in a semi-structured interview. Interview responses were analyzed using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR).
Results:
Quantitative and qualitative data was obtained from 30 practicing geriatric care professionals (22 geriatricians, 5 geriatric psychiatrists, and 3 geriatric nurse practitioners) recruited from across the Greater Toronto Area. Analysis of interview data identified 5 CFIR contextual barriers (Complexity, Design quality and packaging, Patient needs and resources, Readiness for implementation, and Culture) and 13 CFIR contextual facilitators (Relative Advantage, Adaptability, Tension for Change, Available Resources, Access to Knowledge, Network and Communications, Compatibility, Knowledge and Beliefs, Self-Efficacy, Champions, External Agents, Executing, and Reflecting and Evaluating). The CFIR concept of External Policy and Incentives was found to be a neutral construct.
Conclusions:
This is the first known study to use the CFIR to develop a comprehensive narrative to characterize the experiences of Ontario geriatric care professionals using telemedicine technologies in providing care. Overall, telemedicine can significantly enable most of the geriatric care that is traditionally provided in person but is less useful in providing specific aspects of geriatric care to frail older patients, their caregivers, and families.
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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.