The Effectiveness of Virtual Counseling during the COVID-19 Pandemic; Counseling Virtual Study and Carbon Footprint Calculation

Abstract

During the still growing pandemic, the government immediately began to call for a social restriction policy to tackle transmission. It also impacts the health counseling model. Before the pandemic, health counseling was generally carried out face-to-face (physical) which required mobility of both the counselor and the counselee, resulting in a large use of energy in the process which in turn had an impact on environmental degradation. The energy used will be converted into exhaust gas which is known as Greenhouse Gas Emissions. This study investigated how effective virtual counseling is, both from the results (clients can access health services) and from the energy use side. The research method was a combination of qualitative and quantitative or what is called the Mix Method. The approach used the counseling results-based approach and the carbon footprint calculation approach. The results obtained the difference in the number of counselors that could be counseled from face-to-face and virtual counselingcomparing the results of energy use from face-to-face counseling and virtual counseling.