Tips for Transitioning to Telepsychiatry

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

COVID-19 is changing so much about how we practice and how we interact. It's affecting all fields of medicine, and for sure it's affecting psychiatry.

Hi, everyone. I'm Dr Drew Ramsey and I wanted to share some of my experiences upgrading or changing my practice to do more telepsychiatry, as I suspect that so many of you are now engaging with this platform for the first time.

I started doing telepsychiatry about 10 years ago, as I had a number of patients in New York who were traveling to other states or countries, where I would need to see them occasionally. About 3 years ago, due to some health events in my family, I had to split my time between Indiana and New York City, where my practice is.

I was really concerned that that would be the end of my New York City practice, but in fact, about half of my practice is telepsychiatry now. It's a modality I've really come to enjoy.

There's the idea that telepsychiatry is not as good as in-person visits. Now that this is the time to explore telepsychiatry more, I think we should challenge that idea.