Acceptance of telemedicine and new media: a survey of Austrian medical students.
Telemedicine and new media (e.g. the Internet, tele-teaching and tele-learning) are increasingly being used in medicine. We surveyed the awareness and acceptance of these developments on the part of medical students (n =750) at the University of Innsbruck. A 16-item questionnaire was handed out in randomly chosen medical classes and collected immediately after completion, which resulted in a response rate of 99.9%. Nearly all of the students used the Internet regularly (68%) or at least sometimes (30%). Telemedicine was already known to most of the students, mainly from articles in magazines and newspapers (41%), but the great majority of them (95%) reported that they did not know about the telemedicine lectures offered by the University of Innsbruck. Most students (75%) thought that they would benefit from tele-teaching or tele-learning. The survey suggested that medical schools should offer more special lectures, as well as undergraduate or postgraduate qualifications in telemedicine. The marketing of such opportunities needs to be improved.
Moser
Patrizia L
PL
Department of Pathology, University of Innsbruck, Austria. patrizia.moser@uibk.ac.at
Hager
Martina
M
Lorenz
Ingo H
IH
Sögner
Peter
P
Schubert
Heinrich M
HM
Mikuz
Gregor
G
Kolbitsch
Christian
C
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001317:Austria; D001364:Awareness; D020375:Education, Distance; D004501:Education, Medical / Q000379:methods; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D008297:Male; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D017216:Telemedicine