乡镇卫生所医护人员参与糖尿病远距照护意愿的-e-portfolio资讯系统.DOC

The willingness of medical personnel at township health centers to participate in diabetes home telehealth services Diabetic care requires patients’ active participation and self-management. However, in the countryside and the remote areas, there is a shortage of medical specialties to assist patients in building up this ability. If telehealth services could be set up, the quality of local medical care may be improved. The purpose of this study was to investigate local medical personnel’s willingness to participate in diabetes home telehealth services, and their perception of obstacles in carrying out the services. The study design used a qualitative research approach with semi-structured in-depth interview. A total of 21 physician directors and head nurses from 10 purposively sampled health centers of Tainan County had been interviewed. The research was carried out from June 2009 to May 2010. It was found that the medical personnel of local health centers had little knowledge of diabetes home telehealth services. This affected their willingness to promote the diabetic’s self-management through telehealth. They commonly adopted a conservative attitude towards telehealth related activities, which was influenced mainly by three factors. The first one is care providers themselves related. The second factor is care objects related, that is individual patient and the situation he or she was in. The third is health environment related. For making good use of telehealth services and raising overall health care efficacy, we suggest to empower the health care providers, to enhance their knowledge on telehealth and their ability to take care of patients, to strengthen their belief in medical care to be in agreement with that in telehealth, to deeply empathize with local patients and their environmental situations, as well as to design services based on local conditions. Keywords: telehealth, diabetes, qualitative research, health centers 鄉鎮衛生所醫護人員參與糖尿病遠距照護意願的探討