Psychiatrist experience of remote consultations by telephone in an outpatient psychiatric department during the COVID-19 pandemic

OBJECTIVE: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a shift globally from face-to-face consultations to remote consultations. In our department, remote consultations have taken in the form of telephone consultations. In this paper, we set out to study a group of Irish psychiatrists’ experience of these consultations. METHODS: We identified recurrent themes in the existing literature on doctors’ experience of telephone consultations with a view to determining the applicability of these themes to a group of Irish psychiatrists. A questionnaire was developed based on themes in the literature. This was sent to all psychiatrists working in a busy psychiatric service in Dublin. RESULTS: The questionnaire response rate was 72% (n = 26/35). Diagnostic challenges, the effect of phone consultation on the therapeutic alliance, challenges associated with the use of technology and ethical concerns were identified as issues. Flexibility in the working day and convenience were identified as possible benefits to telephone consultations. CONCLUSIONS: The group that participated in this research study identified a number of challenges to carrying out successful phone consultations. This study highlights the need at our clinical site for interventions to address the issues identified by staff. The findings also highlight the requirement for larger studies with stronger methodologies to determine the generalisability of our results.