Acceptability, benefits and challenges of phone counselling: a qualitative study of Bangladeshi doct

Recently, global health institutions and public health systems have continued to advance service capacity building to provide stronger safeguards for public health. The context and objectives of eSanjeevani's remote consulting services are to reduce the burden on secondary and tertiary hospitals and meet the challenges of managing medical needs in rural and remote areas. The study explores the perspective of doctors to assess the acceptance of remote consulting services and identify the potential benefits and challenges of remote consulting services.

The participants reported improved access to general and specialty care for remote residents, reduced travel costs for visitors, time and time spent on medical care for patients. Key advantages included early case identification, timely referrals, follow-up of chronic diseases, and long-term maintenance of electronic medical records. Community health service officers (CHOs) play an important role in improving the quality and acceptability of counseling.

Major challenges include poor network connectivity, limited direct physical inspections, limited public awareness, a lack of guidelines, increased workloads due to the absence of designated remote medical doctors, a lack of review mechanisms due to the lack of regular review mechanisms, and limited availability of medicines and diagnostic facilities in remote facilities. Capacity-Builder provides structured rounds of remote physician design, regular professional scheduling, capacity-building for CHOs, improved guidance distribution, IEC-based awareness raising, and motivation with stakeholders as core elements of maintaining telephone consultation services. It should be noted that the above content is organized based on international public research findings, for reference in healthcare, and does not constitute clinical advice.