The attitudes of multiprofessional teams to telehealth adoption in northern Finland health centres

Abstract

A telehealth network was established between seven health centres, the local university and the university hospital in the Oulu Arc Subregion in a rural area of northern Finland. During the period 2004-2007, the videophone network was used for different types of teleconsultation (orthopaedics, psychiatry, diabetes, rehabilitation), continuing education and various patient care and administrative meetings. Qualitative research with observation and interviews with 30 professionals (physicians, nurses, psychiatric nurses, physiotherapists) was carried out in early 2007 to find out health-care professionals' attitudes toward telehealth and to see how the attitudes were connected to telehealth usage. Overall, the attitudes were more positive than negative, ranging from negative to enthusiastically positive. Diversity of attitudes occurred in relation to time, situation, profession, health centre and telehealth application. Ten different types of telehealth adopters were recognized: enthusiastic user, positive user, critical user, hesitant user, positive participant, hesitant participant, critical participant, neutral participant, negative participant and positive non-participant. Telehealth was especially well accepted in continuing education and in diabetes teleconsultations. The study showed that a negative attitude was not a definite barrier to telehealth adoption, but it did require additional attention from project workers and managers. Project staff and managers need to take into account the diverse attitudes of health professionals, because different people require different actions to adopt telehealth in their work.