During the coronavirus pandemic disease of 2019, many clinics and hospitals were necessitated to move their appointments to video consultation or telephonic consultations so as to prevent the jostle.Uro-oncology is generally practiced among the elderly population and hence it became obscure how the patients would react and adapt to these unfamiliar digital changes.
There is a set of questionnaires that are sent to patients who had received telephonic consultation during COVID-19 to analyze their views on telephone and video consultations and acquiring them. Here goes the survey;
In total 148 questionnaires were sent and the entire set of responders were male.8% aged 40 to 60 years, 77% aged 60 and 80 years, and 15% were 80+ years. There are 20% responders who had absolutely no access to electronic devices such as smartphones, laptop or tablet and neither had network connectivity required for video consultations.
Preferred appointment type between telephonic, video, or hospital; Were asked to the patients. Now across all the age groups, In-person hospital appointment was the top choice, whereas video conferencing was the least one chosen. There were outright written responses acknowledging that remote appointments was a great step ahead in reducing hospital visits and waiting times.
The initiation of telephonic and video consultations would require close care and consideration of a major part of patients specifically elderly ones who are deprived of health services and do not have easy access to media devices.
