Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic led to the implementation of digital psychiatry (DP), resulting in the need for a new skilled healthcare workforce. The purpose of this study was to investigate the level of training, knowledge, beliefs, and experiences of young mental health professionals and medical students in DP. An ad hoc cross-sectional survey was administered and descriptive analyses, Student’s t and ANOVA tests were conducted, together with an exploratory factor analysis, bivariate correlations and linear regression. Most of the sample (N = 239) declared that DP was never discussed within their academic training (89.1%), mainly revealing an overall lack of knowledge on the issue. Nevertheless, subjects mostly declared that DP represents a valuable therapeutic tool in mental health (80%) and that their training should include this topic (54.4%). Moreover, most subjects declared that digital interventions are less effective than face-to-face ones (73.2%), despite the emerging evidence that being trained in DP is significantly associated with the belief that digital and in-person interventions are comparable in their effectiveness (p ≤ 0.05). Strong positive correlations were found between the knowledge score (KS) and perceived significance index (PSI) (r = 0.148, p < 0.001), and KS and Digital Psychiatry Opinion (DPO) index (r = 0.193, p < 0.001). PSI scores statistically significantly predicted KS total scores (F(1, 237) = 5.283, R2 = 0.022, p = 0.022). KS scores statistically significantly predicted DPO total scores (F(1, 237) = 9.136, R2 = 0.037, p = 0.003). During the current pandemic, DP represented an ideal response to the forced physical distancing by ensuring the advantage of greater access to care. However, this kind of intervention is still uncommon, and mental health professionals still prove to be skeptical. The lack of formal training on DP during the academic years could be a limiting factor.
Highlights
The current health emergency is rapidly transforming the medical care system, driving the use of TM to a further exponential increase, the full extent of which is still being measured with the present knowledge [6]
Estimates conducted by McKinsey & Company suggested that telehealth increased 38-fold during the timeframe winter 2020 and winter 2021, with a usage peak during April 2020 and subsequent stabilization in the subsequent months [6]
All recruited participants met the following inclusion criteria: (a) being an Italian medical student, a medical doctor waiting to start a psychiatry training program, a psychiatry trainee, or an early career psychiatrists (ECPs); (b) being able and willing to provide consent to participate in the study and authorization to analyze data for research purposes; (c) filling out all sections and questions of the survey
Summary
The term TM, literally meaning “healing at a distance”, was coined in 1970, referring to care programs addressed to geographically isolated patients [1]. The origins of this technology date back to the early 20th century, and in the subsequent decades rapidly evolved from the spread of the Erickson’s Bakelite telephones, the advent of the Internet and ICTs until the development of online video-communication services This innovation has implemented increasingly effective remote health care, which nowadays represent a valid and cost-effective alternative to the traditional in-patient interventions in various specialty areas of medicine [2,3,4]. Estimates conducted by McKinsey & Company suggested that telehealth increased 38-fold during the timeframe winter 2020 and winter 2021, with a usage peak during April 2020 and subsequent stabilization in the subsequent months [6]
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