~ on behalf of Dr. Andrew Harris, Senior Medical Director, MHAP, and Dana Pulsifer, Senior Director, MHAP
We are pleased to share that primary health care providers are now able to access psychiatry consult services through Virtual Hallway. Through a partnership with Nova Scotia Health’s Mental Health and Addictions Program (MHAP), and Nova Scotia Health’s Innovation HUB, primary health care providers can now book psychiatry consult appointments through the online platform.
MHAP has added a Virtual Hallway section to the MHAHelpNS website under the Primary Health Care tab. Within this section there are resources titled What Makes an Effective Psychiatry Request and Booking a Psychiatry Consult that provide clinical examples of requests psychiatry can be typically consulted on, along with some examples of questions and topic areas that a psychiatrist can assist with.
For example, Virtual Hallway psychiatry consults can assist primary health care providers with:
- Discussing next steps when patient has been tried on one or two first-line agents for depression or anxiety disorders with limited success or side effects
- Discussing weaning schedules when patient is on psychotropic medication for a long time
- Discussing management strategies to help direct care of unstable or complex psychiatric patients who are on a long waiting list until they are seen for full consultation
- Getting advice on how to work with challenging interactions
- Discussing treatment options or potential clinical trials
- Getting advice on how best to approach challenging patient relationships
If you have any additional questions regarding psychiatry consultations within Virtual Hallway please contact Dr. Andrew Harris, senior medical director with Nova Scotia Health’s Mental Health and Addictions Program at Andrew.Harris@nshealth.ca.
For more information and to sign up for Virtual Hallway visit https://virtualhallway.ca/.
Thank you.
