A feasibility study of teleassessment for people with aphasia in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait

ABSTRACT

Purpose

The outbreak of COVID-19 impacted the delivery of outpatient services by various healthcare systems, including speech and language therapy services for people with aphasia (PWA). One possible solution here is telepractice (TP). Previous studies have shown TP to be comparable to the traditional face-to-face (FTF) delivery method for the assessment of PWA. However, these studies have largely been conducted in Western, English-speaking countries. This study evaluates the feasibility of TP to assess PWA using the Short Aphasia Test for Gulf Arabic speakers (SATG).

Method

The feasibility study adopted a within-subject cross-over study design, involving 19 individuals with post-stroke aphasia aged 25–64. Each participant was assessed twice using the SATG, once with each delivery method (FTF and TP) and the scores were compared. We collected a number of feasibility measures, including a comparison of the scores for FTF and TP. Anecdotal cultural influences on participant preferences for TP were noted by researchers.

Results

The Wilcoxon rank-sum tests showed a non-significant difference between the two methods in the overall scores and the subsection scores, except for the auditory comprehension task which showed significantly lower scores for TP delivery. High satisfaction with TP was reported, and practical considerations for implementing TP are discussed.

Conclusion

This study provides evidence of the feasibility of adopting TP to assess PWA in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and highlights the influence of cultural aspects on the use of videoconferencing. Participants reported a preference for some FTF contact to support setting up TP and prior to the first TP session.

KEYWORDS:

• Telepractice
• assessment
• aphasia
• language
• Saudi Arabia

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the Research Centre of the Female Scientific and Medical Colleges, Deanship of Scientific Research, King Saud University. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection or analysis, nor in the decision to publish or the preparation of the manuscript.

Declaration of conflicting of interests

The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.