Are We OK? Potential Impacts of Telehealth Structural Changes on Clinician Wellness – a Research Update

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Recorded Spring, 2025 1.5 Law & Ethics CEs

Though the era of COVID was not the origin of telehealth, licensed mental health providers across the country were forced to shift to this treatment modality in COVID, regardless of preference or personal beliefs around the efficacy of this modality. As we continue to progress past the pandemic, we can look back on where we have been, and cast a vision for where we are going as a mental health counseling field.

As a multi-clinician research team, we have been investigating what have been the impacts of these structural changes (e.g. transitions to home offices, not sharing physical space with clients, changes in commutes and other lifestyle changes, etc.) on clinician’s reported sense of health and wellbeing. We have also been investigating how telehealth practice contributes to, or detract from, clinicians’ effective implementation of self-care. We are working to better understand the benefits, and susceptibilities (potential areas for impairment) that clinicians have experienced.

Join us as we share where we are in the research process, having coded themes we’ll explore together with you for relevance and applicability to clinical practice. We will provide background information and research, all the while looking to expose gaps in the literature, especially related to how the structural changes associated with telehealth practice impact and inform clinical practice.

Learning Outcomes:

· Apply working knowledge of the relevant literature on clinician health and wellness, self-care, and telehealth to clinical practice.  · Foster ongoing self-awareness and telehealth-specific practices of self- care and wellness related activity. · Dialogue around study findings and the themes that are emerging from the data. · Advocate for and participate in increased consultation and collaboration to develop shared nomenclature and understanding of issues.

Timed Outline:

∙ Context and background information: 10 minutes ∙ Coverage of legal and ethical issues: 20 minutes ∙ Project review: 30 minutes ∙ Next steps: 15 minutes ∙ Q&A: 15 minutes

EPDC CE Hours: 1.5

Presenter: Dr. Doug Shirley

Doug Shirley is associate professor of Counseling Psychology at The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology. Doug has been teaching and practicing counseling and psychology since 1999. In and through his private practice, Doug has had the opportunity to walk with any number of helping and healing professionals tending to the fallout that COVID brought to multiple professional realms. Doug has a passion for supporting the helpers themselves: those whose (early) life training has taught them to put others before themselves. In his teaching he is also active in guiding the next wave of counseling professionals: those who will usher our field into its future, whatever that might be.