Authors (including presenting author) :
Poon E (1), Mo SY(1), Hau FW(1), Liu TC (1), Ma HW(1)
Affiliation :
(1) Speech Therapy Department, United Christian Hospital
Introduction :
Out-patient activities have to be trimmed down during the COVID 19 pandemic in order to achieve the social distancing requirement. Non-urgent treatments have to be postponed. Repeated surge of infected cases in the community has accelerated the development of telecare services in health setting.
Extended suspension of face to face classes in view of severity of the pandemic, it is necessary to adopt diversified modes of teaching to facilitate students to continue learning at home. Students and their parents are getting more and more familiar with online activities arranged by school. In parallel, speech therapy telecare services have evolved rapidly to support home training in the pediatric population.
Objectives :
To seek parents’ feedback on the pilot speech therapy telecare services
To guide future service development
Methodology :
A patient satisfaction questionnaire was administered by phone to the parents who accompanied their children in the Zoom session provided by speech therapy department, United Christian Hospital. Only active cases aged 3 to 7 with diagnosis of developmental speech disorders or language disorders were recruited. Individual training with one to two Zoom session was conducted in between face to face sessions.
Result & Outcome :
In July and August 2020, there were 78 cases recruited with total 118 Zoom sessions conducted. The satisfactory questionnaire was administered to 70 parents while failed to contact 8 cases. 87% of parents satisfied with the telecare service as a whole. Majority of parents was satisfied with the duration of the zoom session (91%) and the logistic/workflow of the session (94%). On the other hand, 30% of parents showed dissatisfaction with technical quality while 16% of parents was not satisfied with the treatment outcome. Less than 60% of parents agreed that telecare activities are comparable to face to face consultation. Despite the fact that 73% of parents expressed intention to participate in speech therapy telecare services in future, only 61% were willing to pay for such services. There are other qualitative comments that are invaluable to our refinement of clinical protocol.
