Psychological impact of a remote psychometric consultation with hospitalized elderly people

Teleconsultation is a potentially useful approach to the psychological assessment of elderly patients. We assessed the psychological impact of a videolinked psychometric consultation in a sample of hospitalized elderly people. The 15 patients, none of whom had a psychiatric history, participated in a video-consultation and a conventional face-to-face consultation. The mean age of the patients was 88 years. Each consultation consisted of a preliminary interview with a psychologist and two psychometric tests which evaluated the patient's cognitive function (the Mini-Mental State Examination and the Clock Face Test). A second psychologist, who acted as an observer, assessed the patients' attitudes to the two types of consultation. Although most patients (11 of the 15) expressed a preference for the face-to-face consultation, the video-consultations were judged to be acceptable by the patients and the psychologists. The experience of teleconsultation could be improved by practice on the consultant's part and by some technical modifications. Finally, some differences in test scores were observed and further work is required to evaluate the reliability of different psychometric tests when used by videolink.