Psychological Practice and the COVID-19 Crisis: A Rapid Response Survey
Open accessAbstract
Psychological practice has changed dramatically over the past 125 years. The two world wars both served to stimulate and change the scope of practice for psychologists. We surveyed over 3,000 doctoral psychologists about the impact of the COVID-19 health crisis on their clinical practices. Practice changed from primarily in-office to mostly telepsychology practice over the course of 2 weeks in March of 2020. The long-term effect on professional practice in psychology is not known.
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health clinicians moved to telehealth, and some reported that their telehealth use might continue permanently.
“Mental health clinicians have migrated to telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic and have reported their use of telehealth may be permanent (Békés & Aafjes-van Doorn, 2020; Dores et al., 2020; Sammons et al., 2020).”
From Overcoming Clinician Technophobia: What We Learned from Our Mass Exposure to Telehealth During the COVID-19 Pandemic (2022) · cites this paper as Sammons et al., 2020
The Results (page not provided) document a rapid shift to telepsychology among surveyed psychologists: 83% reported using it almost exclusively after the crisis began. Wrapping Up & Reflection (page not provided) says persistence after the crisis was unclear and expresses the authors’ belief that the shift could create lasting change; it does not report clinicians saying their own use might be permanent. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredOne study found that only 29% of clinical psychologists used telehealth for part of their caseload before the pandemic, but within weeks over 80% used it for nearly all their caseload.
“One study found that only 29% of clinical psychologists used telehealth for a portion of their caseload prior to the pandemic and, within weeks of the pandemic, over 80% of the sample reported using telehealth for nearly their entire caseload (Sammons et al., 2020).”
From Overcoming Clinician Technophobia: What We Learned from Our Mass Exposure to Telehealth During the COVID-19 Pandemic (2022) · cites this paper as Sammons et al., 2020
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- Authors
- Sammons, M. T., VandenBos, G. R., & Martin, J. N.
- Corresponding author
- Sammons, Morgan T.
- Venue
- Journal of Health Service Psychology
- Published
- 2020-05
- Volume
- 46
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 51-57
- ISSN
- 2662-2645 (ISSN-L)
- 2662-2653
- PMC
- PMC7209971
- OpenAlex
- W3023699593
- Cited by
- 75
- References
- 10
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 11.25
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Health Service Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Telemedicine and Telehealth Implementation
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › COVID-19 and Mental Health
- Health Sciences › Dentistry › General Dentistry › Dental Research and COVID-19
- Keywords
- COVID-19 pandemic, telepsychology, clinical practice, scope of practice, psychologists, telemedicine
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