Ethics in Teleassessment

Due to the holistic nature of the rehabilitation concept, rehabilitation assessments include comprehensive examinations and evaluations made by a wide range of rehabilitation professionals such as physical therapists, speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, audiologists, rehabilitation physicians, nurses, psychologists, and dietitians. Therefore, all these professionals need clear guidelines for acting ethically during teleassessments. In this chapter, which includes an overview of the definition, types, tools, advantages and disadvantages, and reliability and validity of teleassessment, readers can find highlighting information about the most important ethical issues regarding teleassessment, such as privacy and confidentiality, informed consent, evaluator qualification, quality of assessment, and data security, which are all based on basic ethical principles of respect for persons, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. The authors hope that this comprehensive review, prepared based on the comments by national and international authorities on the relevant issues, will help physiotherapists and other professional members of the rehabilitation team during teleassessments.