(PS8-D85) Development, Implementation, and Evaluation of a Remote Tele-psychotherapy Training Program

Over the last 20 years, there has been a steady increase in the use of telemental health technologies (TMH) to provide tele-psychotherapy. TMH providers deliver a range of services including individual, couples, group psychotherapy, and assessment. There is strong evidence to suggest that TMH is an effective mode of treatment delivery for a variety of mental health conditions including PTSD, depression, anxiety, insomnia, alcohol abuse, and eating disorders with outcomes comparable to treatments delivered in person. Particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, the delivery of TMH services has grown rapidly. Tele-psychotherapy allowed critical mental health services to continue in the context of a public health crisis. Successful delivery of tele-psychotherapy services requires additional technical and clinical skills and intervention specific knowledge. However, few guidelines for tele-psychotherapy training exist. Despite increased investment in infrastructure for TMH and directives to clinicians to offer tele-psychotherapy, there is scant information on curriculum or best practices to guide the training of clinicians to competently provide these services. While significant overlap exists in the skills required to provide in-person and tele-psychotherapy, a range of differences, challenges, and unique opportunities specific to virtual care exist such that tele-psychotherapy specific training is critical

The goal of this project was to rapidly develop, implement, evaluate, and refine a virtually administered curriculum for tele-psychotherapy that could be utilized across a range of settings, psychotherapeutic interventions, and disciplines during the pandemic. The core components of the training were adapted from competency models for psychotherapy training and tailored specifically for the skills needed to deliver evidence -based psychotherapies remotely. It includes relevant individual factors (e.g. openness to the modality, self-reflection about potential unique processes that occur in remote therapy), basic competence (e.g. communication skills, empathy, ability to establish a working alliance in TMH, addressing issues of diversity/culture), and competencies specific to the delivery of different types of interventions via TMH. Additional components have also been added to specifically address the unique features of TMH delivery including navigating technology and logistics, remote safety and risk planning, and determining appropriateness for tele-psychotherapy. Methods to evaluate student skills have also been developed that utilize Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCE) to address skills around: (1) beginning TMH treatment and (2) remote suicide risk assessment and safety planning. In total, 47 psychology and social work graduate students received the training and trainee evaluations and qualitative feedback have been has been gathered.

Future research will refine the training, expand OSCE development for new clinical scenarios (e.g. couples, groups, PTSD treatment), and continue to examine ways of training clinicians to leverage the unique features of TMH to improve assessment and intervention implementation beyond what is traditionally done in-person.