Background: Telemedicine has become an essential modality for health care service provision in recent years, and teledermatology has been widely adopted since the COVID-19 pandemic, making it essential to explore patients’ experiences of teledermatology services.
Objective: The study’s main objective was to assess utilization, perceptions, and barriers relating to teledermatology health service in the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia’s (KSA) Al-Qassim Province.
Methods: A survey-based cross-sectional study examined a convenient sample of 200 male and female adults living in KSA’s Al-Qassim Province and attending a multidisciplinary outpatient clinic. A structured electronic questionnaire was developed to assess the patients’ utilization, experience, satisfaction, attitudes, and perceived barriers relating to the use of teledermatology.
Results: Among the studied sample, 69% were female, 34% were aged 25-34 years, and 71.5% had university education or above. Prior utilization of teledermatology was observed in 44% of the sample, with 81.9% expressing satisfaction with the service. Prior use of teledermatology was significantly higher among males than among females (56.5% vs. 38.4%, p = 0.017). Prior users reported greater comfort with discussing dermatological problems virtually than those who had never used teledermatology services (41% vs. 25%, p = 0.007). Meanwhile, those who had never used teledermatology services experienced greater concerns regarding their safety and privacy in the context of such services (22.3% vs. 11.4%, p = 0.043) and were more likely to lack trust in virtual consultations (21.4% vs. 6.8%, p = 0.004).
Conclusion: The study’s findings are encouraging and suggest that the post-COVID shift toward new healthcare delivery methods is associated with favorable patient experiences, as represented by users’ high utilization and satisfaction rates and willingness to reuse the service in the future, in addition to low resistance to use among those who had never used such services. Greater governmental effort is required to improve awareness about the service and increase utilization.
Key words: Teledermatology; Telemedicine; utilization; perceptions; satisfaction; barriers, Saudi Arabia
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