Telephone = Telehealth
You might remember my rant about telehealth, fondly or irritably, but here is a little follow-up. One of my suggestions to clients when they begin telehealth is to mention any tech issues (e.g., lag) immediately, rather than waiting and tolerating that relational discomfort. I am willing to spend up to five minutes (but no longer!) working on a tech issue for telehealth. (Consider that, at some point, they’re paying us for IT work, which is definitely outside our boundaries of competence! Haha!) After then 5 minute mark, or after exhausting the typical fixes, I do something wild… I just call them on the phone.
Besides a large body of data indicating the usefulness of telephone consultation, and the history of telephone as the primary form of telehealth work, I came across a delightfully interesting study, with this main finding:
Voice-only communication elicits higher rates of empathic accuracy relative to vision-only and multisense [voice and picture] communication both while engaging in interactions and perceiving emotions in recorded interactions of strangers. … Voice-only communication is particularly likely to enhance empathic accuracy through increasing focused attention on the linguistic and paralinguistic vocal cues that accompany speech. (Kraus, 2017)
That’s cool, huh?! Addresses one of the (apparently imagined!)
Note that this research did not address the difference between voice only and face-to-face communication, which still has a lot of benefits over not being present, including client mimicry (e.g., Salazer-Kampf et al., 2020), interpersonal synchrony (e.g., Rennung & Goritz, 2016), neuroception of safety and social engagement cues (e.g., Porges, 2004), etc. So, I’m not suggesting that telephone is better than being in person together. Just that, if telehealth is necessary, phone might be an acceptable, or more than acceptable, choice!
Comment below: Have you had great/not-so-great telephone sessions? What helped you have a good experience?
References
Kraus, M. W. (2017). Voice-only communication enhances empathic accuracy. American Psychologist, 72(7), 644-654. doi: 10.1037/amp0000147
Porges, S. (2004). Neuroception: A subconscious system for detecting threats and safety. Zero to Three, 24(5), 19-24.
Rennung, M., & Göritz, A. S. (2016). Prosocial consequences of interpersonal synchrony: A meta-analysis. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 224(3), 168-189. doi: 10.1027/2151-2604/a000252
Salazar Kämpf, M., Nestler, S., Hansmeier, J., Glombiewski, J., & Exner, C. (2020). Mimicry in psychotherapy – an actor partner model of therapists’ and patients’ non-verbal behavior and its effects on the working alliance. Psychotherapy Research. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10503307.2020.1849849
Soooo I JUST started relaxing into phone sessions more, because clients will ask for camera off or have tech issues like you mentioned. And It’s actually kind of nice. You have to listen mooooore than in person. More than video. Because all you have is voice. It can be really skill sharpening and powerful