Just Keep Teaching: An Inpatient Psychiatric Service Goes Virtual during the Pandemic

Abstract

COVID19 has fundamentally disrupted the delivery of healthcare, and while telemedicine is an established practice, inpatient psychiatric care has been slow to embrace this change. During the pandemic the authors identified an urgent need to disrupt the delivery of psychiatric care for the safety of their patients and trainees. At the University of Minnesota the authors developed a novel protocol for residents and undergraduate medical learners to deliver care to the inpatient psychiatric service remotely. They describe the development, implementation, and reception of a virtual care and education model in the inpatient psychiatric setting that has not been achieved at other graduate medical institutions. The authors utilized a survey to measure trainee perspectives on the effectiveness of their virtual care and education model. The survey results highlighted the benefits and challenges experienced. The authors argue that telepsychiatry will be an essential aspect of future psychiatric care and that further training in telemedicine during residency is essential.