McLennan John D
Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario-Research Institute, Ottawa, Ontario.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario.
J Can Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2018 Apr;27(2):137-141. Epub 2018 Apr 1.
Telehealth to schools may be a strategic approach to expand child mental health service delivery, however, there are only a few published examples. This report describes video-conferencing telehealth linkage attempts to schools to facilitate mental health consultation.
A series of synchronous video-conferencing linkage strategies were attempted to connect a mental health consultation service to multiple schools in a Canadian setting. Consultation to support the implementation of the Daily Report Card, for students with attentional and behavioural problems, was the core content of this pilot linkage attempt.
Synchronous video conference consultations were successfully delivered to six elementary schools across three school districts. Two of three linkage strategies were functional. One used existing health centre-based telehealth units to connect to school-based dedicated tablets with a video collaboration app and reliance on existing school Wi-Fi. A second used existing laptops in both the health and school system linked through a communication platform. A third connection, using 3G/4G hotspots to obviate the need to access school Wi-Fi, was deemed too expensive in this setting.
The potential to use existing computer hardware to connect mental health providers and schools could facilitate scale-up. However, it is unknown whether mental health systems and school sectors will invest in such linkages and reorganize core mental health services to be delivered in this way.
远程医疗进校园可能是一种扩大儿童心理健康服务覆盖范围的战略方法，然而，仅有少数已发表的实例。本报告描述了为促进心理健康咨询而尝试将视频会议远程医疗与学校建立联系的情况。
尝试了一系列同步视频会议连接策略，以便在加拿大的环境中将心理健康咨询服务与多所学校相连。为有注意力和行为问题的学生提供支持实施每日报告卡的咨询服务，是此次试点连接尝试的核心内容。
同步视频会议咨询成功提供给了三个学区的六所小学。三种连接策略中有两种可行。一种是利用现有的基于健康中心的远程医疗单元，通过视频协作应用程序连接到学校专用平板电脑，并依靠学校现有的无线网络。另一种是在健康系统和学校系统中使用通过通信平台相连的现有笔记本电脑。第三种连接方式是使用3G/4G热点以避免接入学校无线网络，但在这种情况下被认为成本过高。
利用现有计算机硬件连接心理健康服务提供者和学校的潜力有助于扩大规模。然而，心理健康系统和学校部门是否会投资于此类联系并重新组织以这种方式提供的核心心理健康服务尚不清楚。
