Estudo descritivo sobre o serviço de telemedicina no acompanhamento de pacientes diagnosticados com Covid-19 no município de Aparecida de Goiânia

Abstract

Introduction - Telemedicine in the COVID-19 pandemic was present in Brazilian health planning as an assistance tool for the screening of suspected cases, in the monitoring of those infected in home isolation, in the recognition of warning signs and for follow-up after hospital discharge. Despite its growth, it does not remove the continuous need to assess patient satisfaction in relation to the service received. Objective - To describe the telemedicine service used by the municipality of Aparecida de Goiânia to face the COVID-19 pandemic and what is the perception of the patient accompanied by the telemedicine center about the provision of this service. Methods- This is a descriptive, retrospective cross-sectional study carried out in two stages. The first step aimed to characterize the profile of the population served by the telemedicine center in the municipality of Aparecida de Goiânia. The second stage aimed to apply the Satisfaction Assessment Questionnaire (SQ) to 500 volunteers selected in the first stage. This step aimed to obtain information that could characterize the user's perception of the care received by the telemedicine center during the course of the disease. The study was initiated after prior approval by the Research Ethics Committee and oral informed consent of the interviewees. Results - The patients interviewed were mostly female (50.7%), mixed race (55.4%), complete or incomplete higher education (54.2%), with a predominant age group between 40 and 49 years of age (26.6%), with those <60 years old corresponding to 86.6% and the elderly 13.4%. Symptomatic patients corresponded to 99.5% of the sample. The most predominant symptoms were cough (58.0%), headache (50.2%), myalgia (36%) and fever (33.8%). Of the participants, 88.6% were not hospitalized. The QAS shows that the total score, which includes the five indicators, has an average of 80.4% in relation to users' satisfaction with the TM service. Conclusion - The periodic evaluation of the variables investigated in this work allows the feedback of the model used in the municipality of Aparecida de Goiânia and, therefore, that dynamic adjustments can be performed to achieve favorable conditions for the improvement of the TM service