JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Although telemedicine grew rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic, instruments to assess general practitioners’ attitudes and behavioural intentions to use it are scarce. In Sweden, the Physicians’ Attitudes and Intentions to use Telemedicine questionnaire (PAIT), was developed from the 'Theory of Planned Behaviour' in 2019 and translated to English 2022.

Objective:

The aim of this study was to explore similarities and differences between behavioural intentions and predictors of intentions to use telemedicine among GPs in England and Sweden.

Methods:

This study compared attitudes, behavioural intentions, and self-reported use of telemedicine after the COVID-19 pandemic among 52 GPs in England and 161 GPs in Sweden. PAIT has 33 items with 7-point Likert scale options ranging from “Strongly disagree” to “Strongly agree” examining three predictors of intentions: Attitudes (12 items), Subjective Norms (6 items), Perceived Behavioural Control (9 items), and “Intentions” (6 items) to use telemedicine; 22 items assess usage of telemedicine tools, general questions about telemedicine, training experience, free text comments, demographic and background questions.

Results:

Both English and Swedish GPs reported little training and low usage of telemedicine after the COVID-19 pandemic. Swedish GPs had significantly higher mean scores for intention to use telemedicine in daily practice when compared to English GPs. More positive attitudes and higher perceived behavioural control were significantly associated with higher behavioural intention scores, in both English and Swedish GPs.

Conclusions:

These findings provide insights into the similarities and differences between English and Swedish GPs' regarding telemedicine adoption - attitudes, behavioural intentions, and self-reported use of telemedicine assessed by the PAIT questionnaire which proved useful for cross-country comparisons and could be employed for further international studies. Clinical Trial: NA