Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Dec 8, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: Dec 8, 2021 - Dec 9, 2021
Date Accepted: Apr 12, 2022
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Addiction and Mental Health Clinicians’ Attitudes Toward Telepsychology: Predicting Post-Pandemic Telepsychology Uptake
ABSTRACT
Background:
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted an unprecedented uptake of telepsychology services; however, clinicians are mixed in their attitudes toward virtual technologies.
Objective:
This study explored clinician attitudes towards video, telephone, and in-person services and tested the utility of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) to predict clinician intention to offer telepsychology post-pandemic.
Methods:
Clinician satisfaction and therapeutic alliance were compared across in-person, video, and telephone while ease of communication, technology attitudes, and intention to use post-pandemic were compared across video and telephone services in 118 addiction and mental health clinicians during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Results:
Clinicians reported more positive attitudes toward in-person services than both virtual technologies, and more positive attitudes towards video- than telephone-based services across measures (P < .001). Based on the UTAUT, performance expectancy positively predicted concurrent intention to use video (β = 0.46, P < .001) and telephone (β = 0.35, P < .001) services in future practice. Social influence (β = 0.24, P = .004) and facilitating conditions (β = 0.19, P = .028) additionally predicted intention to use telephone.
Conclusions:
Clinicians have more positive attitudes towards in-person than virtual technologies, with video perceived more positively than telephone; performance expectancy is a primary facilitator to uptake of both virtual modalities. Recommendations and limitations are discussed.
Citation
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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.