Pediatric rehabilitation services during COVID-19 pandemic in the United Arab Emirates

Abstract

Introduction/Objective. COVID-19 pandemic has changed the rehabilitation practice across the globe. A sudden transition from in person therapy at the center to remote therapy challenged the mangers and multi-disciplinary team members providing pediatric rehabilitation. The main objective of this research was to assess the provision of services for children with disabilities during COVID 19 in the UAE. Methods. Two surveys were developed by the research team, one for the center managers and the others for multidisciplinary team members. Both surveys were validated through experts followed by a pilot study. The final versions of the survey were sent to all the pediatric rehabilitation centers within the United Arab Emirates in September 2020. A total of 44 managers and 434 multidisciplinary team members completed the survey. Results. The accessibility of the pediatric rehabilitation services was reported to be very high with 77%. Regarding the cost for running the services almost half 46% of managers reported to be costlier than the normal. Telerehabilitation was the most common approach utilized with synchronized live video calls (86%), YouTube video clips (88%) and created own video (65%). Conclusion. Telerehabilitation appeared to be the most efficient model used for pediatric rehabilitation during the pandemic. The future investments for the continued use of telerehabilitation require planning, budgeting, investing and creating supportive environments for parents, children and multidisciplinary team members. There is a need for sharing platforms for educational and therapeutic resources created during the pandemic with ongoing research on telerehabilitation.