Competencies for Online Service for Clinical Psychologists: A Documentary Analysis

Abstract

Working in online clinical psychologist services has several benefits, such as the possibility of reaching geographically distant people. Despite this, the specificities of this work modality demand that professionals develop different skills and abilities compared to face-to-face service. The objective of this study was to analyze and categorize the skills required for clinical psychologists to provide online services, through a documentary analysis of national and international documents and articles. The analysis of the 14 documents and five articles found 31 competences characteristic of online care, which were organized into ten categories (technological skills, financial skills, multidisciplinary skills, scientific skills, emergency skills, patient teaching skills, ethical skills, jurisdiction knowledge skills, contractual skills and multicultural skills). It was noticed that there are differences between skills for online service, as well as a lack of documents that provide guidance for clinical psychologists regarding this type of service, making informative and training strategies necessary.