Abstract

While Canadian telemedicine has grown in popularity following the COVID-19 pandemic, research on patient and provider satisfaction with these services is scarce, especially in its application in prenatal care delivery. Moreover, majority of existing literature focuses on clinical outcomes when investigating prenatal telemedicine’s success, leaving a gap in our understanding of patient-provider satisfaction. Literature examining attitudes towards virtual prenatal appointments consistently notes low satisfaction and rarely offers recommendations to improve care. This review aims to investigate determinants of and barriers to patient-provider satisfaction with virtual prenatal appointments and offer recommendations to improve Canadian satisfaction. Searches were run on PubMed and CINAHL using keywords including “prenatal”, “virtual”, “satisfaction”, and “appointment”. The retrieved literature was uploaded and screened in Covidence. In total, 43 papers covering virtual prenatal care in jurisdictions outside of Canada were reviewed for data extraction. The literature was summarized alongside six key themes: logistical barriers, non-logistical barriers, patient-provider communication, appointment types, general benefits of telehealth, and suggestions for improvement. Leading determinants were found to be the level of perceived and actual barriers to utilization, quality of patient-provider communication and relationships, and access to devices and internet connectivity. Recommendations for improving satisfaction with Canadian care include cross-border consultations, use of provider care teams, and improved telehealth management and provider training. The focus on international research enabled us to identify what lessons Canadian practitioners can learn from other countries in the provision of virtual prenatal care. This review also contributes to the scarce Canadian research on satisfaction with virtual prenatal appointments.