Mojtaba Khadem Al-Hosseini; Mostafa Lotfi; Farzaneh Mohammadi; Gordon A Ferns; Marzieh Akbarzadeh
Abstract
Background: Today, the use of social media for health care advice has become more popular. The present study aimed to evaluate the opinions of Iranian dietitians on virtual nutritional counseling on the Instagram platform.Methods: The present descriptive, cross-sectional study enrolled Iranian dietitians ...
Read More
Background: Today, the use of social media for health care advice has become more popular. The present study aimed to evaluate the opinions of Iranian dietitians on virtual nutritional counseling on the Instagram platform.Methods: The present descriptive, cross-sectional study enrolled Iranian dietitians working in the field of nutrition counseling using Instagram. The link to an online questionnaire including questions on their activity in virtual counseling on Instagram and the challenges of virtual counseling was sent to the 131 participants. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze and interpret the data.Results: Out of 163 dietitians, 131 participated in the study. 47.3% started virtual counseling during COVID-19, and 35.2% had more virtual clients. 58.8% preferred face-to-face counseling for concept transfer, and 43.5% found it more effective. Text and voice messaging were the most practical methods for virtual counseling, with weight loss being the most common topic.Conclusion: During the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual nutritional counseling became more widespread. However, it is believed that face-to-face counseling is more effective in conveying concepts. For virtual platforms, text messaging is the most practical method for nutrition counseling, followed by voice messaging. It has been observed that the elderly have been the least likely people to seek virtual nutrition counseling, while weight loss counseling has been the most frequently requested topic.
Hamed Delam; Mohammad-Rafi Bazrafshan
Abstract
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a severe respiratory illness with an unknown cause that was diagnosed in December 2019 in Wuhan, China (1-3). Iran is one of the countries involved with this disease. The global outbreak of the disease raises concerns about increased anxiety due to the risk of contracting ...
Read More
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a severe respiratory illness with an unknown cause that was diagnosed in December 2019 in Wuhan, China (1-3). Iran is one of the countries involved with this disease. The global outbreak of the disease raises concerns about increased anxiety due to the risk of contracting the virus (4). Therefore, in addition to causing physical harm, COVID-19 also has a serious effect on people's mental health. To date, no exact information is available on the mental health problems and psychological effects of COVID-19 on people, nor is it clear how people react when faced with such a crisis; therefore, for health care providers how best to respond to challenges related to COVID-19 is confusing. However, observing the consequences of mental health and the measures taken during the outbreak of SARS in 2003 can help the health care systems to make mental health interventions for people that are involved with COVID-19 (5). However, many people may not be sure that their health care systems are ready to deal with coronavirus, and a lack of trust in the country's health care system is likely to raise concerns about the consequences of the disease. In such circumstances, people use different methods of obtaining information when faced with crisis situations; sometimes these methods are invalid. One of these methods is to obtain information from invalid social media such as Instagram, WhatsApp and so on. Nowadays, with the availability of smartphones, the expansion of activities in virtual networks has become more and more. Therefore, people in anxious situations are looking for information to relieve their anxiety and for this purpose, they search social networks and being exposed to incorrect information in social networks can aggravate their anxiety (6). Therefore, in this situation, several factors may lead to development of Chronophobia. One of these conditions is using unreliable social media. In this regard, a study conducted by the Indian people on awareness, attitude and anxiety about COVID-19 showed that people's anxiety about this disease was at a high level and distress-related social media was seen in 36.4% of the people, and the participants expressed that one of the most important resources of anxiety was the social media (7). At this time, the important question is whether the health care systems in the country are ready to deal with the growing concern of the people in such a situation that is the result of misinterpretation of the symptoms of COVID-19 and in cases where mild respiratory symptoms may develop Chronophobia. Meanwhile, the role of health care provider in reducing people's anxiety and preventing Chronophobia is vital (8, 9). Finally, it can be said that health care systems can prevent Chronophobia by increasing people's knowledge, thus improving their attitudes towards COVID-19.
Hamed Delam; Ahmadreza Eidi
Abstract
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID 19), which originated in December 2019, on January 30, 2020 was declared by the World Health Organization as the sixth public health emergency from international concerns [1]. Since the onset of the disease in late 2019 to mid-June 2020, more than 8.5 million people ...
Read More
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID 19), which originated in December 2019, on January 30, 2020 was declared by the World Health Organization as the sixth public health emergency from international concerns [1]. Since the onset of the disease in late 2019 to mid-June 2020, more than 8.5 million people around the world have been infected with COVID 19. Of these, more than 450,000 have died [2]. So far, six species of human coronavirus have been identified, most of which , like SARS in 2002 and MERS in 2012, cause mild respiratory illness [3]. During the spread of COVID 19 worldwide, people use social media to receive and exchange information [4]. With the advent of smartphones, widespread access to the Internet, and the availability of instant messaging applications, it has become clear that these communications can have numerous benefits for healthcare providers as well. WhatsApp is one of the instant messaging applications that is widely used in healthcare and is, therefore, a popular app [5]; it has about 1.5 billion users worldwide [6]. WhatsApp is compatible with all smartphone operating systems such as iPhone, Android, Windows phone [7]. This messenger allows its users to easily share text and video messages as well as media files and content with other users. A,lso group chats and the participation of several users in calls for conversation are easily available in this messenger. WhatsApp communications can be done easily and internationally. WhatsApp is available for everyone for an annual subscription fee of $0.99 [6, 8]. In addition to major changes in people's daily lifestyles, social media has improved communication between patients and professionals by establishing fast multimedia communication, health education, social support, and better health decisions, so that WhatsApp has been used in cases such as drug therapy problems, drug and dietary supplements, emotional changes, lifestyle habits, social rights, physical symptoms, commitment to treatment, medical emergencies, oral health promotion and issues of dentistry [9]. According to a study by Kurubaran Ganasegeran et al., most health system employees understand the use of WhatsApp in health and clinical matters, and it has been observed that these messengers in clinical departments (approximately 61% of employees), clinics (about 60%), operating room (56%) and when calling the treatment staff (approximately 55%) have been used [8]. The World Health Organization also defines mobile (wireless) health as public health, supported by wireless devices such as mobile phones, monitoring devices, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other wireless devices [10]. Given the prevalence of COVID 19 worldwide and the risk to all individuals, the use of WhatsApp Messenger to inform the latest announcements of the World Health Organization, public and regional health centers, health professionals, and researchers can have a significant impact on public health. The messenger can also be used to effectively communicate with members of the medical staff to resolve the questions and rumors, and avoid frequent visits to health centers that are high-risk areas. WhatsApp can also be contacted by friends and acquaintances using voice and video calls, which can probably reduce the psychological pressure of the quarantine and isolation to some extent.
Amir Reza Estakhrian Haghighi; Gholam Reza Oskrochi; Rogheyeh Eskrootchi; Ali Akbar Farhangi
Volume 5, Issue 3 , July 2017, , Pages 123-129
Abstract
Background: In the present era, Digital Media Content has played an effective role in the formation of socio-economic and social behaviors. The aim of this research was to investigate the views of media experts in different levels of this filed on factors that affect user-media relationship in the following ...
Read More
Background: In the present era, Digital Media Content has played an effective role in the formation of socio-economic and social behaviors. The aim of this research was to investigate the views of media experts in different levels of this filed on factors that affect user-media relationship in the following domains: non-verbal communication, interaction with media audience, effect of media on various domains, attitudes of the audience toward electronic media, and audience’s priorities- economic aspects in Iran.Methods: A questionnaire was designed and validated by a pilot study and distributed to a sample of 40 experts and users of digital media on July, 2017. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS Version 22; the significance level was set to 5% in hypotheses testing.Results: The results show that the participants generally agreed on all statements regarding the study domains. However, the level of agreement to all domains was different among different groups of the respondents (mean=14.03 among media strategists as the lowest and mean=35.13 among media managers as the highest levels of agreement, P<0.001) and the domains of the study (mean=28.50 for the higher impact of traditional media and mean=22.50 for the effect of communication technology on increase of interaction between media and audience). Conclusion: The highest rate of agreement was reported for the domain “Traditional media have a higher impact on their audience than the new media, suggesting the importance of traditional media in public knowledge and behavior. However, there was significant difference in the experts’ opinions regarding each domain.
