Teleaudiology practice in COVID-19 pandemic in Egypt and Saudi Arabia

Reem Elbeltagy; Eman H Waly; Huny M Bakry

doi:10.1016/j.joto.2021.12.002

Teleaudiology practice in COVID-19 pandemic in Egypt and Saudi Arabia

J Otol. 2022 Apr;17(2):78-83. doi: 10.1016/j.joto.2021.12.002. Epub 2021 Dec 24.

Authors

Reem Elbeltagy^{1

2}, Eman H Waly³, Huny M Bakry³

Affiliations

¹ Audiovestibular medicine, Otorhinolaryngology Department, Faculty of Medicine, Zagazig University, Egypt.
² Health Communication Sciences Department. College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Saudi Arabia.
³ Community, Environmental and Occupational Medicine Department, Faculty of Medicine, Zagazig University, Egypt.

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the audiologists' attitudes and practice towards teleaudiology, as well as to assess the audiological services provided in Egypt and Saudi Arabia during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted among 112 audiologists who were recruited through convenience sampling . Multinomial logistic regression was used to test the association between practice of tele audiology as a dependent variable and some independent variables.

Results: 25.4% of the studied sample were practicing tele audiology. Participants' age and attitude toward telemedicine were the independent predictors of tele audiology practice at p value ≤ 0.05.

Conclusion: The tele audiology practice is essential. Therefore, raising the knowledge of audiologist about the great value of practicing tele audiology is very important, infrastructure, equipment, and technology especially telecommunication should be improved and facilitated for both audiologist and patients.

Keywords: Audiology; COVID-19; Egypt; Saudi Arabia; Telemedicine.