Educating Optometry Undergraduates Through Telemedicine: The Optometry Educator’s Perspectives

Abstract

Introduction: Although telemedicine has been long available, the pandemic precipitates immediate demand to expand ophthalmic care delivery. For the technology to be used in local practices, a few factors need to be considered in terms of awareness, knowledge, attitude and individual skills regarding telemedicine from the optometry educator’s perspective. Methods: A cross-sectional study was done among the optometry educators servicing the optometry school in Malaysia. A validated questionnaire regarding the awareness, knowledge, attitude and individual skills of telemedicine was adopted from the previous study. The responses were gathered from two- to five-point scales which differed from each section. The level of awareness, knowledge, attitude and skills were calculated by the summation of the answer collected. Scores less than 49% were considered low, 50% to 70% were considered average and 71% and above were considered high. Results: 48 out of 70 respondents (68%) returned the survey after three weeks of distribution from five main universities in Malaysia. Fifty-eight percent of the respondents are highly aware of telemedicine, the minority (27%) showed a high knowledge of telemedicine, a majority (83%) have a high attitude towards telemedicine, and almost halves of respondent (44%) have average to high skills in ICT. There is a significant difference in total scores of knowledges, attitudes, and skills among educators that have different roles in the department, academic qualifications and working experience (p<0.05). An open-ended questionnaire showed that majority of the respondents have low acceptability of the implementation of telemedicine in the practice due to lack of training and the unavailability of the facilities that provide it. Conclusion: Awareness, knowledge, attitude, and skills towards telemedicine were on an average to high level among the optometry educators, however, the lack of training and lack of availability results in poor acceptability of it.