JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Teledermatology (TD) is a branch of the telemedicine focused on the evaluation of cutaneous lesions by dermatologists remotely, in order to avoid unnecessary consults that could be otherwise resolved by this method, and to shorten time for promptly evaluation of cutaneous diseases.

Objective:

To create and validate a questionnaire to evaluate the satisfaction in the use of TD among primary care pediatricians (PCPs) and to test the questionnaire in our health area before performing an intervention for optimization of the TD.

Methods:

We first created a questionnaire based on previous publications, Then, an expert consultation was made before writing the final version of the questionnaire. We tested it twice on pediatricians of different health areas with a 1-month gap between both administrations. Internal consistency, reproducibility and validity were evaluated. Finally, the validated questionnaire was tested on the PCPs of our health area, analyzing their responses.

Results:

We registered 38 responses. 30 PCPs (78,9%) actively used TD several times a month or a year. None of them use TD daily. Technical and health care quality of TD was mostly considered as good or very good. TD was similar or even better than face-to-face evaluation for most PCPs, while 7,9% thought TD was worse than conventional consult. Most of PCPs considered TD as an effective, self-learning and trustable tool. 10,5% identified that pictures performed by mobile phones were a barrier for its use, as it affects to patient privacy. Technical problems, absence of exclusive devices for TD image taking, and delayed answers are some other barriers detected to overcome. Nonetheless, all PCPs were satisfied with TD and all of them would continue or start to use this tool.

Conclusions:

TD has demonstrated to be an efficient tool as it reduces waiting time and costs for dermatology evaluation, and increases satisfaction among professionals. With our questionnaire, we verified that quality, usability, efficacy and satisfaction related to TD in our health area had a positive consideration between PCPs in general terms, but there are still barriers to overcome.