Authors (including presenting author) :
Lo C Y (1), Hui Y S (1), Wong TK (1)
Affiliation :
(1) Department of Family Medicine and Primary Health Care KEC
Introduction :
Many patients were reluctant to attend clinics or hospitals during COVID-19 pandemic for smoking cessation service. On the other hand, our usual smoking cessation telephone counselling may not be interactive enough to provide ongoing support. New model of care is needed during the pandemic when face to face consultation is to be minimized if possible.
Objectives :
Telecare through video calls (TTVC) is adopted to replace the current practice of telephone counselling aiming to enhance the quality of care and to serves to test out the acceptability this new model of care to our patients.
Methodology :
Current patients receiving smoking cessation counselling were recruited if they were smart enough to use video calls by mobile devices.
Patients were required to sign electronic consent forms and install the software-Zoom in their mobile devices. Appointments were arranged at their convenience. 15-30 minutes per counselling session were administered using video calls.
Online self-rated satisfaction survey was performed after at least two telecare sessions.
Result & Outcome :
75 patients were recruited. Most were male (72%) with mean age 50.1 years. Total 258 telecare sessions were conducted with average of 3 sessions per patient. 98.6% patients responded to the satisfaction survey.
The overall comments were very positive with 41.9% and 54.1% rating very satisfied and satisfied with TTVC service. 91.8 % patients would recommend this service to others. 87.8 % agreed that communication during the TTVC was more effective than using telephone. 91.9% felt comfortable with the use of TTCV. 90.5% felt technical connection in TTCV was very user friendly. Over 90 % rated both sound and picture quality were good. 95.9% felt the privacy and confidentiality were respected and protected during sessions. The quit rates of patients received TTVC in general were higher than those receiving usual telephone counselling (quit rate at 1 month, 6 month and 12 month: 81.0%, 78.9% and 73.1% for TTVC vs 79.8%, 73.3% and 63.1% for telephone counselling), though not statistically significant.
To conclude, TTVC was a feasible and welcomed alternative to usual telephone counselling for following up patients. It could enhance the quality of care of current model and may be applied to future services like doctor consultation in selected group especially during the pandemic period when face to face consultation is not preferred.
