A survey of the attitudes of practitioners toward teleaudiology

Gurjit Singh, M. Kathleen Pichora-Fuller, Marissa Malkowski, Michael Boretzki, Stefan Launer

Objective: To survey hearing healthcare practitioners' (1) attitudes toward teleaudiology appointments, (2) willingness to conduct different clinical tasks via teleaudiology, and (3) willingness to conduct a teleaudiology appointment with different patient populations. Design: All participants were asked to complete the Attitudes toward Teleaudiology Scale for Practitioners (ATS-P), a 46-item online survey designed for this study. Study sample: The responses from 202 hearing healthcare practitioners working in Canada were collected. The sample consisted of 152 audiologists, 49 hearing instrument specialists, and one who did not specify a category. Results: The majority of respondents indicated that teleaudiology is likely to have a minimal effect on the quality of hearing healthcare in audiology and the quality of client-practitioner interactions, although many respondents indicated that teleaudiology would have a positive effect on accessibility to service. Nevertheless, a small minority of respondents indicated that teleaudiology would have a negative impact on quality of care in audiology. Conclusions: Willingness to use teleaudiology depended on a combination of the clinical tasks to be performed and the patient populations to be served. These findings can help guide the successful implementation of teleaudiology services.