Phone or video consultations during the Covid-19 pandemic: experiences in psychiatric outpatient care

Background After the worsening of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, the Department of Psychiatry at Helsinki University Hospital HUH transformed most of the outpatient consultations to phone or video consultations. The aim of this present study was to assess the experiences of personnel with and their attitudes towards telephone and video consultations in psychiatric care in HUH.

Methods A Webropol questionnaire was sent by email to personnel in outpatient care in HUH Psychiatry. The questionnaire enquired about distress caused by tele consultations and how respondents assessed the appropriateness of tele consultations as a model for psychiatric outpatient care.

Results A total of 370 staff members responded to the questionnaire. The main findings are that, for the most part, both telephone and video consultations were assessed to be good in the different patient groups although video meetings were assessed to be better than telephone meetings in all fields of psychiatric work.

Conclusions In the future, it might be possible for outpatient care to be carried out on a larger scale by tele consultations.