Telemedicine usage among ayurvedic physicians: Current Scenario - A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Pandemic and advancing technologies have surged the use of Telemedicine services in every medical care field. Its implications have been in the arena of Ayurveda as well. The extent of practice and knowledge among Ayurvedic physicians is yet to be studied. Study to determine how much and what kind of knowledge Ayurvedic physicians have about Telemedicine. Google form survey-based cross-sectional study among Ayurvedic physicians in Kerala via WhatsApp. The questionnaire was developed based on in-depth interviews among Ayurveda physicians from each speciality, which is pretested to confirm reliability and validity tested using Split half and Cronbach’s alpha test (alpha coefficient =0.48). Cross tabs of the variables and various factors of telemedicine practice were worked out to see the relationship. More than half of the participants (54.8%) do not practice telemedicine. Among those practising telemedicine, 90% of participants commenced during the pandemic. All the practitioners in the government sector started with telemedicine due to the pandemic, while a small share of private practitioners (5.9%) cast off it before. The majority had not gone through the guidelines issued on telemedicine. 54% of government practitioners are dissatisfied, while 60% of private practitioners are content. Practices like consent-taking hardly apply. Acceptability and applicability of Telemedicine among Ayurveda physicians are slow. Addition of Medico-legal and technological education as a part of the curriculum is the need of the hour to catch up with the cumulative numeral of “e-patients”.