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Surgeons’ Interactions With and Attitudes Toward E-Patients: Questionnaire Study in Germany and Oman

BACKGROUND: Doctors’ interactions with and attitudes toward e-patients have an overall impact on health care delivery. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to gauge surgeons’ interactions with e-patients, their attitudes toward those e-patient activities, the possible impact on the delivery of health care, a...

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Autores principales: Masters, Ken, Loda, Teresa, Johannink, Jonas, Al-Abri, Rashid, Herrmann-Werner, Anne
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7091032/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32149714
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/14646
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author Masters, Ken
Loda, Teresa
Johannink, Jonas
Al-Abri, Rashid
Herrmann-Werner, Anne
author_facet Masters, Ken
Loda, Teresa
Johannink, Jonas
Al-Abri, Rashid
Herrmann-Werner, Anne
author_sort Masters, Ken
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Doctors’ interactions with and attitudes toward e-patients have an overall impact on health care delivery. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to gauge surgeons’ interactions with e-patients, their attitudes toward those e-patient activities, the possible impact on the delivery of health care, and the reasons behind those activities and attitudes. METHODS: We created a paper-based and electronic survey form based on pertinent variables identified in the literature, and from March 2018 to July 2018 we surveyed 49 surgeons in Germany and 59 surgeons in Oman, asking them about their interactions with and attitudes toward e-patients. Data were stored in Microsoft Excel and SPSS, and descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, and chi-square tests were performed on the data. RESULTS: Of our sample, 71% (35/49) of the German surgeons and 56% (33/59) of the Omani surgeons communicated electronically with their patients. Although the German surgeons spent a greater percentage of Internet usage time on work-related activities (χ(2)(18)=32.5; P=.02) than the Omani surgeons, there were many similarities in their activities. An outstanding difference was that the German surgeons used email with their patients more than the Omani surgeons (χ(2)(1)=9.0; P=.003), and the Omani surgeons used social media, specifically WhatsApp, more than the German surgeons (χ(2)(1)=18.6; P<.001). Overall, the surgeons were equally positive about the most common e-patient activities such as bringing material from the internet to the consultation (mean 4.11, SD 1.6), although the German surgeons (mean 3.43, SD 1.9) were more concerned (P=.001) than the Omani surgeons (mean 2.32, SD 1.3) about the potential loss of control and time consumption (German: mean 5.10, SD 1.4 and Omani: mean 3.92, SD 1.6; P<.001). CONCLUSIONS: The interactions show a high degree of engagement with e-patients. The differences between the German and the Omani surgeons in the preferred methods of communication are possibly closely linked to cultural differences and recent historical events. These differences may, moreover, indicate e-patients’ desired method of electronic communication to include social media. The low impact of surgeons’ attitudes on the activities may also result from a normalization of many e-patient activities, irrespective of the doctors’ attitudes and influences.
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spelling pubmed-70910322020-03-31 Surgeons’ Interactions With and Attitudes Toward E-Patients: Questionnaire Study in Germany and Oman Masters, Ken Loda, Teresa Johannink, Jonas Al-Abri, Rashid Herrmann-Werner, Anne J Med Internet Res Original Paper BACKGROUND: Doctors’ interactions with and attitudes toward e-patients have an overall impact on health care delivery. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to gauge surgeons’ interactions with e-patients, their attitudes toward those e-patient activities, the possible impact on the delivery of health care, and the reasons behind those activities and attitudes. METHODS: We created a paper-based and electronic survey form based on pertinent variables identified in the literature, and from March 2018 to July 2018 we surveyed 49 surgeons in Germany and 59 surgeons in Oman, asking them about their interactions with and attitudes toward e-patients. Data were stored in Microsoft Excel and SPSS, and descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, and chi-square tests were performed on the data. RESULTS: Of our sample, 71% (35/49) of the German surgeons and 56% (33/59) of the Omani surgeons communicated electronically with their patients. Although the German surgeons spent a greater percentage of Internet usage time on work-related activities (χ(2)(18)=32.5; P=.02) than the Omani surgeons, there were many similarities in their activities. An outstanding difference was that the German surgeons used email with their patients more than the Omani surgeons (χ(2)(1)=9.0; P=.003), and the Omani surgeons used social media, specifically WhatsApp, more than the German surgeons (χ(2)(1)=18.6; P<.001). Overall, the surgeons were equally positive about the most common e-patient activities such as bringing material from the internet to the consultation (mean 4.11, SD 1.6), although the German surgeons (mean 3.43, SD 1.9) were more concerned (P=.001) than the Omani surgeons (mean 2.32, SD 1.3) about the potential loss of control and time consumption (German: mean 5.10, SD 1.4 and Omani: mean 3.92, SD 1.6; P<.001). CONCLUSIONS: The interactions show a high degree of engagement with e-patients. The differences between the German and the Omani surgeons in the preferred methods of communication are possibly closely linked to cultural differences and recent historical events. These differences may, moreover, indicate e-patients’ desired method of electronic communication to include social media. The low impact of surgeons’ attitudes on the activities may also result from a normalization of many e-patient activities, irrespective of the doctors’ attitudes and influences. JMIR Publications 2020-03-09 /pmc/articles/PMC7091032/ /pubmed/32149714 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/14646 Text en ©Ken Masters, Teresa Loda, Jonas Johannink, Rashid Al-Abri, Anne Herrmann-Werner. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 09.03.2020. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Masters, Ken
Loda, Teresa
Johannink, Jonas
Al-Abri, Rashid
Herrmann-Werner, Anne
Surgeons’ Interactions With and Attitudes Toward E-Patients: Questionnaire Study in Germany and Oman
title Surgeons’ Interactions With and Attitudes Toward E-Patients: Questionnaire Study in Germany and Oman
title_full Surgeons’ Interactions With and Attitudes Toward E-Patients: Questionnaire Study in Germany and Oman
title_fullStr Surgeons’ Interactions With and Attitudes Toward E-Patients: Questionnaire Study in Germany and Oman
title_full_unstemmed Surgeons’ Interactions With and Attitudes Toward E-Patients: Questionnaire Study in Germany and Oman
title_short Surgeons’ Interactions With and Attitudes Toward E-Patients: Questionnaire Study in Germany and Oman
title_sort surgeons’ interactions with and attitudes toward e-patients: questionnaire study in germany and oman
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7091032/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32149714
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/14646
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