Avaliação da satisfação de usuários da atenção primária à saúde com o cuidado mediado por telessaúde durante a Pandemia de COVID-19 na Paraíba

Abstract

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in health have been widely used, and the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated their adoption, especially in the health sector. The trend is for these practices to become permanent in health services. This research aimed to assess the satisfaction of Primary Health Care (PHC) users with the care provided through ICT in Paraíba during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a cross-sectional study with a quantitative approach, covering the entire state of Paraíba. The study population consisted of PHC users in the state, with a sample of 412 users distributed across 16 municipalities. Data was collected using the Questionnaire for Evaluating the Satisfaction of Patients Served via Telemedicine (QAS-Tele), adapted for this study. The questionnaire was made available on Google Forms and applied by trained interviewers using tablets. The data was tabulated in Excel and analyzed using R statistical software, with descriptive analyses and associations of variables. The results show that the majority of participants were women, self-declared brown, aged between 29 and 51, with complete primary education and living in their own home. Most of the care was provided by PHC professionals, mainly for non-clinical complaints and monitoring chronic diseases, with the majority of users being seen more than seven times. The most commonly used tool was WhatsApp. Regarding overall satisfaction, 91% of users considered telemedicine care to be better than expected, and 92.9% were satisfied with this type of care. The majority of participants (94.2%) had no concerns about privacy during the service, and 65.9% considered the ICT service to be as good as the face-to-face service. In terms of convenience, 90% said they had saved travel time, although 53.8% said they had not saved any money. With regard to the doctor-patient relationship, 87.6% of respondents felt comfortable with the professional via video, and 85.6% considered the service to be complete. Acceptance of telemedicine was confirmed by 63.5% of the participants, who preferred not to waste time traveling to face-to face appointments, and 97.3% developed a relationship of trust with the professional. The ability to communicate via telemedicine was well evaluated, with 85.6% of participants reporting that they had no difficulty hearing or seeing the professional and 92.7% being able to explain their problems clearly. In addition, 95.1% of respondents thought that telemedicine care was good for them and 91% would recommend this type of care. The associations between variables were not significant in most cases. The conclusion is that the use of ICT for continuity of care during the pandemic was well accepted by users, achieving a uniformly high percentage of satisfaction.