COVID-19 Mini-Series: Interview with Dr. Tara McBride Afonso

Tara McBride Afonso, PsyD, is a staff psychologist at VA Boston Healthcare System and Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. McBride specializes in providing psychotherapy, assessments, and caregiver support to homebound older adults and their families. In addition to in-person care, she has been providing clinical services via telehealth for several years. Dr. McBride earned her doctorate from Nova Southeastern University where she carved out her own geropsychology focused training, went on to complete a pre-doctoral internship at Louis Stokes Cleveland VA in the gero-track, and a postdoctoral fellowship in Geropsychology at VA Boston. In addition to clinical duties, she supervises psychology fellows who rotate through the Home Based Primary Care setting and is a member of the Disruptive Behavior Committee at VA Boston.

Resources discussed in today’s episode:

McKnight Article: ‘Tips for Successful Telehealth Services Implementation in SNFs,’ by Jennifer Birdsall.

APA Articles on Telehealth:

APA Guidelines for the practice of telepsychology

Ethical guidance for the COVID-19 era

How to apply telehealth in Nursing Homes

COVID-19: What the Ethics Code says about reopening your practice now

Further Reading:

Implementation Considerations for Telehealth Programs Serving Older Adults, by the Rural Health Information Hub

‘Therapy Notes’ blog article: “The Therapist’s Telehealth Guide for COVID-19”

Gould, C. E., & Hantke, N. C. (2020). Promoting technology and virtual visits to improve older adult mental health in the face of COVID-19. The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 28(8), 889-890.

Hantke, N. C., & Gould, C. (2020). Examining Older Adult Cognitive Status in the Time of COVID‐19. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 68(7), 1387-1389. https://doi.org/10.1111/jgs.16514

Pimentel, C. B., Gately, M., Barczi, S. R., Boockvar, K. S., Bowman, E. H., Caprio, T. V., ... & Griffiths, P. C. (2019). GRECC Connect: geriatrics telehealth to empower health care providers and improve management of older veterans in rural communities. Federal Practitioner, 36(10), 464.