Abstract
Purpose :
Attitudes toward technology determine its acceptance and usage. Optometrists’ attitudes are generally positive for established retinal imaging types though unclear for OCTA. We performed a cross-sectional survey to estimate attitudes toward OCTA and determine whether they are associated with clinician and/or practice characteristics.
Methods :
A paper-based survey was mailed to 252 randomly selected optometrists in Australia. Five-point Likert-scale items from a survey evaluating optometrist attitudes toward artificial intelligence and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 were included to probe clinician and practice characteristics, and attitudes toward retinal imaging. Responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics and performance expectancy attitudes toward OCTA were elicited by the statement ‘I believe OCTA is useful in daily practice’. Mean scores out of 5 (mean[SD]) were rounded and mapped to appropriate descriptive statements.
Results :
The response rate was 47% (118/252). The mean (SD) age of respondents was 44.0 (13.8) years and 50.8% (60/118) were female. Optometrists had 19.9 (14.0) years of clinical experience on average and 66.9% (79/118) worked at independent practices. In total, 8.5% (10/118) of respondents used OCTA to provide clinical care. Optometrists agreed that OCT (4.7 [0.7]), color fundus imaging (4.7 [0.6]), ultra-wide field imaging (4.2 [0.8]) and fundus autofluorescence (3.6 [0.9]) were useful in daily practice, and neither agreed nor disagreed that OCTA was useful (3.4 [0.8]). Optometrists believe that OCTA is less enjoyable to use (p<0.0001), less endorsed by peers (p<0.0001) and felt less confident that they have the knowledge to interpret OCTA imaging (p<0.0001) compared to other retinal imaging types. The number of optometrists working per day had a weak, negative effect on performance expectancy attitudes toward OCTA (b=-0.202, p=0.032).
Conclusions :
Optometrists are undecided on whether OCTA is useful in daily practice and expressed lower expectations that using OCTA would confer job performance benefits compared to other retinal imaging types. The lack of strong associations between clinician or practice characteristics to the primary outcome suggest that further work is needed to advocate the benefits of using OCTA across primary eye care clinicians.
This abstract was presented at the 2023 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in New Orleans, LA, April 23-27, 2023.