Tele-rehabilitation for visually challenged students during COVID-19 pandemic

  1. Suraj Singh Senjam
  2. Souvik Manna
  3. Praveen Vashist
  4. Vivek Gupta
  5. Sara Varughese
  6. Radhika Tandon

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Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak poses a global crisis in health care delivery system, including habilitation and rehabilitation services. In this study, we shared our experiences on telerehabilitation services established primarily for students with visual disabilities (SwVD) amidst COVID-19 pandemic and its outputs.

Methods:

Following the lockdown declared on March 23, 2020, the rehabilitative team of a tertiary eye center in north India received information that many visually challenged students (VCS) were stranded in schools for the blind in Delhi, and feeling with anxiety and panic in absence of teachers. Shortly, the room for vision rehabilitation clinic was set-up for telefacilities. The intended services were explained while disseminating the mobile numbers. A semi-structured questionnaire consisting of closed and open-ended was developed to record COVID-19 knowledge and concerns. Inductive content analysis was used to report the qualitative information.

Results:

As of June 30, 2020, a total of 492 clients contacted the team, with maximum from Delhi (41.5%), and predominantly males (78.8%). Around 80.3% of callers were VCS with age range of 11 to 30 years. The two most frequently encountered health needs were itching in eyes (36.1%) and headache (29%). Television news was the most used medium among callers to get COVID-19 information. Cough is a less frequently known mode of transmission (28%), similarly handwashing as a less known for prevention (17.2%). Eight concerns were recorded based on qualitative data analysis.

Conclusion:

Telerehabilitation provides valuable insights and has the potential to address various concerns, uncertainty, anxiety, and fear among VCS during the pandemic.

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  1. Version published to 10.4103/ijo.ijo_2527_20
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.31.20249111: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: Since, it was not possible to have a written consent, an implied consent of the callers was considered as the call was initiated from the clients.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    BlindingShortly following the nationwide emergency lockdown, declared on March 23, 2020, the team of Vision Rehabilitation &Training Center (VR&TC) of a tertiary eye care centre in north India noticed that many SwVD were stranded at schools for the blind (residential) or vocational training centers in National Capital Regions, India.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    College Station, Tx: StataCorp LP), whereas inductive content analysis was done for the qualitative information based on Thomas’s method manually. [16] Inductive analysis was performed to gain meaningful information received or to understand more insights.
    StataCorp
    suggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.12.31.20249111v1 on medRxiv